America under Trump - Year One: January 2017 to ... January 2017

Fuck this guy, fuck this administration, fuck this unwanted and obvious occupation.
Let's keep the conversation going.

doesnt sound like a dialogue tbh

It's not like he reads responses to his tweets.

I'd certainly welcome dissenting viewpoints! I think most of us would.
The conversation I have in mind is less one with the occupying administration and more among everyone else about how to best (non-violently) obstruct it.

There's a separate thread for that

I do not welcome dissenting viewpoints. By which I mean if you are pro-Trump, you are anti-me, and I would have to be a moron to welcome people who are against my existence into my life.

I'm unlikely to fault anyone for violent obstruction tbh.

yes i'm all for this not becoming a defend the indefensible thread xp

The crux is probably the idea that further dehumanizing the other side to the same degree they dehumanize you might be totally justified but will also mean worse things down the road given the trajectory it creates.

this shit again, really?

Feedback loop

new thread please

Uh. Just speculating! I certainly hope something finally goes wrong for President elect Magoo

Humanizing Republicans and respecting their views has not worked out particularly well for liberals and progressives over the last 20 years.

Yeah I wasn't arguing for it myself, was just pointing out that nothing seems like a good route forward

i'd draw a line between those who are actively part of the problem and those who are passively part of the problem and may just need to be properly acquainted with what that problem is, but that's a personal choice.

my main point is that if you want this thread to be something other than "white dudes searching for a way to reassure other white dudes that things will be okay intermingled with existential wailing", starting out with "I wish the people who voted for Trump were more active in these threads" is not a good way to start

The only way to slow down the machine or change its direction is to inject energy that obstructs or deflects it. The fact that the machine has the weight of the government behind it, able to use both law and tax revenue to fuel its course, means one hell of a lot of obstructive energy will be required.

^ To which I'd add that there will be a lot of defeats, but getting discouraged over them won't help a damn bit. Just like being stuck in a crappy job, you have to get up and face the same crappy facts every goddamn day and still keep going.

The extent to which people have been legitimately victimized by forces beyond their control is worthy of sympathy and attempts at understanding and rectifying the underlying problems. The extent to which some of those victims made the conscious decision to cast a vote for a hateful rich mentally-ill bully is the extent to which my own personal sympathy and understanding kinda dry on the vine.

yeah 'we need to sympathize w/ and better understand trump voters' is just self-flagellation. I don't think the gop won because they spent 8 years 'understanding obama voters'.

can i talk about a movie i just saw? it was called "tangsir" and it came out in '73 or '74 as part of the iranian new wave. it resonated with me because it was so much a reaction to systemic injustice, in this case the injustice of the shah, but that reaction was to my western eyes pretty horrifying. the hero of the movie was kind of straightforwardly what we would today call an "islamic terrorist". this was a useful movie to watch because in resistance you can get a little bit unsure about where exactly the line is, there's a tendency to ask "is our resistance going to bring about another iran, another syria?" and based on what i saw in tangsir, yeah, probably not, if only because nobody is going around telling people that god told us to kill certain people in the name of justice.

https://www.thenation.com/article/congressional-resistance-to-trump-begins-now

already seeing a lot of Republican members of the House coming out of the woodwork to whine about this, which I suppose is a good sign for us

guessing they're hoping everyone forgot about their much-applauded plan to delay a Supreme Court justice for 4 years

I lost respect for my pro-Trump friend when he cried about rigging prior to the election and didn't give two shits when he later heard about Russia intervention. Just shows you that people have their candidate and don't care about the facts. How can you work with people like that?

You can't. So you work around them.

^^^

it's okay to have enemies

yeah most Trump voters I know don't believe the Russia story one bit, chalking it up to sour grapes, straight up saying the FBI and CIA and all the other intelligence agencies "can't really know" or whatever

how shocking that those same people were 100% convinced that there was something damning in those Hillary emails though

There's a thing I've been mulling over that I'm sure has been said a thousand times by now about how people like that are increasingly rejecting the idea of expertise because, in an era when literally everyone can broadcast their thoughts to the world with no effort whatsoever and has instantaneous access to all of the information from forever, everyone is an expert. Because dumb people misunderstand what expertise is. And dumb pseudoexperts always have to voice their dumb pseudoexpert opinions because and basically only because outlets exist that allow them to do so. But basically 99.9% of opinions are worthless and pointless and based on very little in the way of information and certainly not expertise. Like that percentage I whipped up just now? Total bullshit that I completely pulled out of my ass. Everybody needs to shut up and also to stop listening to everybody else.

Basically kinda just feeling like unearned confidence (which 99.9% of confidence is) needs to be stamped into the dirt and replaced with constant self-doubt and -reflection.

YouTube clip upthread from seven years ago with Megyn Kelly and Naomi Wolf. Not sure if they've kept in touch over the years.

Getting lost amidst Russian talk is the number of voters bounced from rolls in three swing states because of shady cross checks. That's a bigger problem for 2016 elections than hacktivities by intelligence agencies. Aren't most developed nations doing things like that?

Kellyanne Conway and Naomi Wolf, that should read.

Oh--and wrong thread.

There's a thing I've been mulling over that I'm sure has been said a thousand times by now about how people like that are increasingly rejecting the idea of expertise because, in an era when literally everyone can broadcast their thoughts to the world with no effort whatsoever and has instantaneous access to all of the information from forever, everyone is an expert.

Gove: Britons 'Have Had Enough of Experts'

Guessing Conway benefits a lot from Shock Doctrine analysis.

this isn't specifically about Trump, but is interesting on the idea of wisdom of experts vs wisdom of "the people" imo:

http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2016/12/elites-or-people.html

Both can sometimes go wrong. Experts are prone not just to professional deformation (pdf) – the tendency for perceptions to be warped by their training – but also groupthink. For example, the replication crisis – which is by no means confined to psychology – suggests that peer review fails to weed out poor academic research and might even enhance groupthink.

What’s more, pretences to expertise can often merely be a desire for wealth and power, as Alasdair MacIntyre wrote:

The realm of managerial expertise is one in which what purport to be objectively-grounded claims function in fact as expressions of arbitrary, but disguised, will and preference. (After Virtue, p107)

But on the other hand, we know that the people are often wrong about basic facts, are terrible at understanding connections between economic phenomena, are misinformed by a biased media, and prone to countless cognitive biases.

Rather than always side with the people or always with elites, we should abandon grandiose generalizations and ask in each specific context: who is most likely to be right here – the elite or the people?

Or the elite can also engage in the self-doubt-fest I propose. Humility and the acceptance that one can and might be wrong can go a long way, imo, and doubly so wrt people who are highly-trained within their chosen field.

http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/religionprof/files/2017/01/Smug-Pilots.jpg

the "russian intervention" is being blown completely out of proportion and, frankly, functions as a screen to prevent a clear view of what went wrong with the HRC campaign in specific and the D party more broadly

^^^

xp as someone pointed out on twitter, that cartoon confuses politics for technocracy, which is seductive but a surefire losing strategy

I'd argue that the reaction has been, if anything, understated but that it's the proposed effect on the HRC campaign which has been wildly overstated.

russian nationalism is bad

putin's foreign policy is bad

the vulnerability of civic/gov't institutions is bad

julian assange really hates hillary clinton

russia did not "hack the election"

xp OL yeah i'd agree with that

The hacking wouldn't have had the impact it had without an overly-credulous US media making a mountain out of their molehill and an overly-credulous citizenry uncritically lapping it up.

raiding private emails and sifting them out to confreres for maximum misleading dissemination... is bad!

but wikileaks didn't tip this election. if any single person did (who isn't hillary clinton or donald trump), it was james comey

i mean, if you read the press it's hard to keep straight that we had two "email hacking" scandals at the same time

btw happy new year everyone

it's hard to isolate whatever effect wikileaks had, it probably had some minor effect and every minor effect ended up tipping the election. the russia hacking stuff is important because:

a. it delegitimizes trump's election. we need to be doing this constantly and from every direction.
b. it helps limit his ability to pal around w/ a dictator. obv he's still going to do it, but this does make it look even worse.
c. regardless of how many voters changed their minds because they hated podesta's risotto recipe, the russian government was able to take over an american news cycle at will. this wasn't even the first example of foreign governments using hacking + american free press to achieve some goal (north korea and sony) and it won't be the last.

I don't think the Podesta emails swung things a whole lot, but the "DNC screwed Bernie" thing definitely moved the needle some. I don't know any Bernie voters who went Trump but I know a lot of them didn't bother to vote at all.

the russia thing seems to me like something of a redo of the hanging chad squad back in 2000. i had no patience with this line of argument back then, but surprisingly i'm much more okay with the sequel.

in 2000, as in 2016, the democrats ran a shit candidate in a shit fashion. all of the "hanging chad" bullshit was just that, bullshit, but it didn't detract from honest analyses of their candidate's failure because nobody is motivated to fucking do that anyway. a serious moral reckoning is only going to come if people start kicking the bums out, get involved and primary these assholes.

I mean our weak candidate still won the popular vote by a comfortable margin, the failure was ultimately geographic. I don't think bush admin people in 2004 were sitting around doing honest analyses about why they only won the election by 3 million votes. their 3 million votes were distributed better.

the GOP doesn't really care about mandates one way or another

i mean, they act like they have one no matter their electoral position

do the gay marriage democrats not?

What a bad idea it seems for the Clintons to attend the inauguration. I mean, I can see why they would do it, but I can also see Trump gloating and targeting them in his speech, or his followers starting the "lock her up" chant, which would not be a good scene.

I've seen the figure thrown around w concern from people on left who are annoyed that Russia (or if literally any other reason for Trump winning than "Hillary is bad") is brought up that "50% of Clinton voters think Russia hacked voting machines" which you know when people were saying "rigged primary" for months seems like something you probably shouldn't express concern about.

It would make sense for the Clintons to not show up if all of the former Presidents were going to stay home. If it's just them, it makes it look like she is so hurt and cowed by losing the election that she can't bear to be in Trump's vicinity. If none of the former Presidents put in an appearance, it would look like everyone who has previously held the job has no respect for the man about to take it, which I think is probably true across the board (even for noted anti-intellectual populist GWB).

I thought so far Carter was the only one who said he would attend

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/03/politics/george-w-bush-laura-bush-to-attend-trump-inauguration/index.html

I would be shocked if it doesn't get ugly. Either Trump will say something, or his supporters will say something, or Trump will play nice and humiliate them later.

No one is going to be shocked when it gets ugly, including the Clintons.

I mean, I can see why they would do it

wedding photo reboot! hilarious

was discussing this in a bar with j0rdan, i told him she will be mouthing the oath along with him, just in case

do the gay marriage democrats not?

― j.

gay marriage democrats can, i believe, differentiate between a moral mandate and a popular mandate. republicans cannot.

> that cartoon confuses politics for technocracy

One party has had technocracy as its major selling point for decades.

It lead them to a misbegotten affair with neoliberal economists. The ones who comprise 90+% of the economics profession/religion/dogma. They'd do well to rediscover the academic dissent.

yeah 'we need to sympathize w/ and better understand trump voters' is just self-flagellation. I don't think the gop won because they spent 8 years 'understanding obama voters'.

― iatee, Tuesday, January 3, 2017 2:21 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seriously - one month prior to the election, the narrative was the GOP was dead, giving up on the Presidential race and salvaging downticket races, and then after he won, everybody begins applying ex post facto logic insinuating they were more in touch with voters?

Obviously the Rust Belt vote swung the election so they get the attention, and there's a fair point to be made in Democrats re-engaging the middle class, but racism, sexism, the Comey factor, and Russian interference all had a bigger part to play in it and everybody wants to sweep that under the rug.

saw a tweet a few weeks ago where a voter suffering buyer's remorse as more Goldman Sachs folk entered Trump's team, saying something to the effect of "Donald, I voted for you because I thought you'd create jobs, I voted against many things I believed in for this, don't make me regret it". It's like - if you lack scruples to the point where you knowingly vote for a guy who will cause pain to people THAT YOU KNOW for the sliver of the chance that he's going to create you a job...you ain't much better than his alt-right voters.

the russia thing seems to me like something of a redo of the hanging chad squad back in 2000. i had no patience with this line of argument back then, but surprisingly i'm much more okay with the sequel.

in 2000, as in 2016, the democrats ran a shit candidate in a shit fashion. all of the "hanging chad" bullshit was just that, bullshit, but it didn't detract from honest analyses of their candidate's failure because nobody is motivated to fucking do that anyway. a serious moral reckoning is only going to come if people start kicking the bums out, get involved and primary these assholes.

Lol at the endless liberal self-flagellation over winning the popular vote and getting fucked over by a completely absurd system. Our parents really did a number on us, didn't they?

Does anybody think the GOP would treat such a thin (nonexistent) victory as legitimate? Obama whipped them twice and they're still going to be talking about how he wasn't really the president long after he's dead.

It's all about what lessons you want other people to learn based on your beliefs. Nobody does any disciplined analysis. Nobody talks about the fundamental problems in the design of the system. It's all feelings and traditions and arguments from authority or hypocrisy or both.

It's almost like arguing politics on a music discussion board

Does anybody think the GOP would treat such a thin (nonexistent) victory as legitimate? Obama whipped them twice and they're still going to be talking about how he wasn't really the president long after he's dead.

― The beaver is not the bad guy (El Tomboto), Tuesday, January 3, 2017 6:15 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/trumprevolution2-20121106.jpg

It's like - if you lack scruples to the point where you knowingly vote for a guy who will cause pain to people THAT YOU KNOW for the sliver of the chance that he's going to create you a job...you ain't much better than his alt-right voters.

― Neanderthal, Tuesday, January 3, 2017 5:11 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not so much lacking scruples as it is lacking any sort of critical thinking skills. Trump was shown to be, time and time again, a baldfaced liar and an obvious con man, someone who MASSIVELY JACKED UP THE RENT ON HIS OWN CAMPAIGN HQ when the donor money started coming in. not only that but it was incredibly obvious to anyone paying attention that the man had to plans whatsoever in case he won; he'd just spout out junk like "giant border wall" and "35% tariff" and unveil tax plans which put us 200 trillion dollars in debt. if you believed a single promise he made, you're an idiot.

that New Yorker cartoon is trademark liberal snot btw. Keep blowing it.

that New Yorker cartoon is trademark liberal snot btw. Keep blowing it.

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius)

get the fuck over yourself. do you really have nothing better to do with your life than send angry tweets at the democratic party?

Obviously the Rust Belt vote swung the election so they get the attention, and there's a fair point to be made in Democrats re-engaging the middle class, but racism, sexism, the Comey factor, and Russian interference all had a bigger part to play in it and everybody wants to sweep that under the rug.

Iatee & Neanderthal OTM

http://i64.tinypic.com/2zq5vkp.jpg

xpost

yeah fuck it i'm out. thread's all yours, morbz.

Obviously the Rust Belt vote swung the election so they get the attention, and there's a fair point to be made in Democrats re-engaging the middle class, but racism, sexism, the Comey factor, and Russian interference all Clinton being a uniquely bad candidate had a bigger part to play in it and everybody wants to sweep that under the rug.

Herp a derp derp it's Adam time folks

Yeah I don't know how anyone is expected to take the "we can't allow discussing any reasons for Trump winning other than Hillary and the neoliberals are bad" position as anything other than childish. The Comey letter in particular had an impact.

what exactly does 'not sweeping it under the rug' entail? does it matter that 'clinton sucks!!'? not really. there won't be another politician w/ anything like her story anytime soon.

the idea that clinton was a weak candidate (or a 'uniquely bad candidate') came to being long after she had established her place as the nominee. for most of obama's presidency she appeared to be a very well positioned candidate - the perfect resume, a good historical narrative to sell and fairly high approval ratings:

http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/6zre0zbbrk6ojzogkmjo1q.png

in a world where america didn't decide to talk about various bullshit email scandals for a year straight, we might still be talking bout how she was a uniquely good candidate, just as people were a few years ago.

You could also read that graph as her numbers returning to the mean of most of her political life? She was popular when Republicans were going insane about a blowjob and again when she was Secretary of State under a popular President and then her numbers fell as she moved back to being a politician.

I mean, I'm not sure in which universe she was ever considered a "uniquely good candidate" given that she lost the 2008 race to a half-term Senator after being anointed by the party?

the idea that clinton was a weak candidate (or a 'uniquely bad candidate') came to being long after she had established her place as the nominee

oh to live in your fantasy wonderland

I mean our weak candidate still won the popular vote by a comfortable margin, the failure was ultimately geographic. I don't think bush admin people in 2004 were sitting around doing honest analyses about why they only won the election by 3 million votes. their 3 million votes were distributed better.

― iatee, Tuesday, January 3, 2017 10:20 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in fact, bush claimed a mandate and proceeded to try to fuck with social security, then katrina happened and he was the worlds lamest duck.

the idea that clinton was a weak candidate (or a 'uniquely bad candidate') came to being long after she had established her place as the nominee

oh to live in your fantasy wonderland

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, January 3, 2017 7:16 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry adam, let me fix that

the idea that clinton was a weak candidate came to being long after she had established her place as the nominee, unless you were part of the subset of americans who have been waging vendettas against the clintons for 3 decades. those guys knew the whole time and weren't fooled by things like poll numbers.

Nobody talks about the fundamental problems in the design of the system.

Does anybody here not recognize these things and maybe that's why it's not the topic?

The Senate is a reality, the Electoral College is a reality. There are no signs that anyone is developing a feasible idea to abolish either or both. Raging at 'geography' is, if anything, more hopeless than self-flagellation.

the idea that clinton was a weak candidate (or a 'uniquely bad candidate') came to being long after she had established her place as the nominee. for most of obama's presidency she appeared to be a very well positioned candidate - the perfect resume, a good historical narrative to sell and fairly high approval ratings:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CmHiNluWgAQLiLm.jpg

no, she had historically awful approval ratings, those of a surefire general election loser in a normal election. we were all counting on the fact that trump's were worse.

xp- It's almost like you didn't post a chart showing her favorability dipping into the mid-40s the last time she ran for President.

xxxxp

I want to live in the fantasy wonderland where Adam Bruneau has anything other than dull, predictable bullshit to contribute on basically any topic (although when other people who actually care about stuff and know things try to engage with you, it's often educational, so thank you for being a troll?)

It was only Hillary's fault she lost the general election (no other reasons are allowed I can't accept it) and also at the same time it wasn't Bernie's fault in any way that he lost the primary.

Does anybody here not recognize these things and maybe that's why it's not the topic?

The Senate is a reality, the Electoral College is a reality. There are no signs that anyone is developing a feasible idea to abolish either or both. Raging at 'geography' is, if anything, more hopeless than self-flagellation.

Yes, but since 2000 wasn't enough of a lesson, it feels extremely important to me that we use the next few cycles not only to address granular matters of enfranchisement like the right to vote itself, but macro enfranchisement like proper vote counting.

My answer to AK/WY/SD/ND is to create a DC/PR/GU/VI/AS/ statehood with real Congressional representation, and then (as I believe I've said) burn the EC at the stake.

It should be part of the platform. Not doing all of that the very next chance they get is just bad poker.

there were plenty of fair reasons to criticize clinton but it's a mistake to inflate any of them into the notion that she was a "uniquely bad candidate." i didn't vote for her in the primaries but objectively clinton was probably one of the strongest candidates the party has had for decades, not up there with obama but definitely a better candidate than gore, dukakis, or mondale. she did well in the debates and looked like the foregone-conclusion winner up until election day. the idea that the dems blew the election on day one by nominating her (and that this mattered more than fbi/wikileaks/putin) is unfounded imo.

it's crazy that Republicans can just pass laws now

xp - What do you mean by "strongest"? Is that like the 'most qualified' line (which still doesn't make any sense, particularly as a line for the party that nominated Obama after half a term in the Senate)?

I'd define strongest as popularity and political skill (i.e. skill at public speaking, connecting with people, etc.) - neither of which works in her favor.

'in terms of' not 'as'

no, she had historically awful approval ratings, those of a surefire general election loser in a normal election. we were all counting on the fact that trump's were worse.

- part of (but not all of) this is just the trend towards polarization, it's hard to be popular today. basically all of that 'deep bench' of republican candidates had deeply negative favorability ratings. sanders got to escape the gutter politics because he only had to play with democrats, but nobody actually knows how successfully he'd deal with the type of negative media the clintons have been dealing with for decades.

- my point was her unpopularity was only obvious once she'd scared off all serious challengers (biden, warren mostly) - any of whom would have had to start their campaigns very early if they wanted to appear as real contenders and not just spoilers.

She beat the other guy by 2 points nationally. At this point, autopsies of the run and the candidate are even stupider and lazier than pointing out how fucked up the EC is, imo

there's a fair point to be made in Democrats re-engaging the middle class

Can you define "middle class" here in a way that doesn't reduce to "midwestern white people" kthxbye

the EC has always been fucked up, but republicans have just discovered that they have a deep love for it, which will remain until they lose an election because of it

the lessons I see from this election are "we need more candidates who look and sound good on tv and let's not pretend that doesn't matter" and "don't run ads in georgia until you are 1000000% sure you are winning the states that actually matter"

HRC's political skills: she connects well in small group settings, but she's not very good at generating excitement in the general public.

Her qualifications: she's always been willing to work hard at policy details and her long involvement in both domestic politics and foreign policy issues meant she could sort through complex situations and fit them into a detailed and coherent worldview, including personal experience at many levels of government. Her conclusions may be disagreed with, but her ability and experience is not in question.

Her weak point has always been that large swaths of the general public distrusted her starting in 1992 and she's been continuously targeted with intense disinformation campaigns since then, so another large swath of the public had slumbering, but easily aroused doubts, based on the idea that so much smoke must mean a fire somewhere. James Comey and the whole email server "issue" spoke to those doubts, even though the dimension of the problem was mostly a fog of "concern" as opposed to anything concrete.

In sum, I don't buy the idea that HRC was a uniquely bad candidate, but rather that she had some narrowly based, but severe, weaknesses that had little to do with her ability to govern or her public record, but a hell of a lot to do with how the public felt about her, mostly based on a lot of misogyny and made up crap.

Should've kept all this on the 2016 thread imo

aimless otm

Can you define "middle class" here in a way that doesn't reduce to "midwestern white people" kthxbye

This is a big problem. You have the remnants of the Blue Dogs that think the path is caving on abortion and equal rights and that's a non-starter.

Having a message that might bring non-voters out is a start.

Non-voters dont listen to messages. They see celebrities. If Dems can gin up a popular celebrity for prez then problem solved.

https://pauseliveaction.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/george_clooney.jpg

No

The electoral magic of Trump's candidacy was the ease with which the particular nature of his celebrity (obnoxious rich businessman) slotted inti preconceived GOP obsessions about govt needing to be run "like a bysiness" (a ridiculous fallacy that they've perpetuated for decades).

Sorry for typos stupid phone etc

Obama at least had "cool black guy" going for him, in celebrity terms.

oh my fucking god can we stop talking about HRC and discuss how to stop Trump

let's talk about how Trump won the primaries, first. start from the beginning.

Trump's success was primarily based around the relatively new dynamic of celebrity being more important electorally than money, ground game, ideology, or any other factor that was previously decisive. Winning the presidency is now, more than ever before, about charisma and media manipulation, the rest is secondary.

But yes alfred otm lets move on. Please.

Alfred otm

let's talk more about the massive phone campaign that (at least temporarily) prevented the gutting of the OCE, can that be applied/harnessed going forward? was it really just people calling their reps?

or talk about anything else at all besides more Monday morning quarterbacking

I hope that's what it was but Trump tweet muddies the water

Alfred totally OTM

I'm confused is it alfred otm, Alfred otm or Alfred totally OTM

sorry I'm not getting many opportunities to make shitty jokes at work

Why the Democrats lost seems integral to 2018 and 2020 ie how Trump actually gets stopped

Oh c'mon, Trump will NEVER win a second term . . .

Xpost Cos it was four years of meticulous internal number crunching and strategizing that got the GOP the White House

As has been stated ad nauseum, the reasons (excluding anything specific to this set of candidates) why the dems lost the presidency in 2016: gerrymandering, electoral college, low voter turnout, voter suppression, the media rewarding Russia's hacking efforts, a tribal populace that thinks it knows everything despite a general lack of basic critical thinking skills. Lots of fronts to attack there, take yer pick.

How does gerrymandering apply to the general election?

gerrymandering is code for "Chuck Schumer-style thinking"

Fuck you

A sadly prophetic article from April that talks a bit about how gerrymandering affects the general: http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/gop-wants-a-minority-popular-vote-to-control-the-electoral-college-winner

why is gerrymandering always presented as something the republicans are doing, that the democrats should probably think about responding to, maybe, sometime, if they're not too busy? they're not in the same business of trying to win elections?

xp
Could affect the general, if it came to pass.

Come to think of it they kind of pushed the Trump Clinton equivelency hard at times. Of course after the election they act like Trump winning is " year zero" obviously a much worse thing than they would have reacted to a Clinton victory. But they don't take any responsibility for what they put out into their echo chamber during the election itself.

Wrong thread, disregard.

As has been stated ad nauseum, the reasons (excluding anything specific to this set of candidates) why the dems lost the presidency in 2016: gerrymandering, electoral college, low voter turnout, voter suppression, the media rewarding Russia's hacking efforts, a tribal populace that thinks it knows everything despite a general lack of basic critical thinking skills. Lots of fronts to attack there, take yer pick.

― DJ Untz Hall (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 4 January 2017 03:58 (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Usefully this also serves as a list of "Reasons the Dems lost the Senate, which they were definitely going to win, woah maybe even the House might be up for grabs".

let's talk more about the massive phone campaign that (at least temporarily) prevented the gutting of the OCE, can that be applied/harnessed going forward? was it really just people calling their reps?

WaPo presenting the prevention of OCE gutting as result of Trump himself stepping in

What do you want to believe?

I mean of course the WaPo will press a lazy narrative with as few characters as possible (they pay for the Monkey Cage as a sort of carbon offset imo). Does that mean people contacting their representatives is obsolete? Should it be put to bed as a tactic? I'm of the mind that we should do everything and assume it has an effect unless proven that it has the *opposite* effect. The way newspapermen string their rote exercises together is not by itself proof of anything.

No - I guess this should be on the Newspaper Industry thread instead, but my point is, even this early setback for the administration is being spun in a pro-Trump way by an outlet I regarded with higher respect than its competitors for its coverage of the election. The method is definitely not obsolete, and I'd argue that the narrative that this election, like Brexit, is a triumph of "populism" (a narrative I don't personally believe) might lend contacting representatives a power it formerly or recently lacked.

The Guardian has quotes from more people, though they're largely what you'd expect.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/03/house-republicans-drop-ethics-watchdog-trump

Just wondering, why was Illinois the one-state at least this time around to buck the trend? We are right next to Wisconsin, we are practically right next to Michigan, we have an asshole GOP gov, but we evicted a (somewhat) moderate republican Senator and stayed blue.

greater chicago is just a much larger urban area than the other midwestern cities and dominates the state population

rest of the state was very red

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Illinois_2016_presidential_results_by_county.png/800px-Illinois_2016_presidential_results_by_county.png

xpost Pretty much entirely Chicago, right?

Re: OCE, was just coming here to lament that literally every news org is patting Trump on the back for something that he probably did not do. It's almost like they learned nothing at all.

Sure, but Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio etc. Current December are they? Big urban centers, scattered population Red State?

Like, just glancing, nearly half of Wisconsin's population is Milwaukee and Madison.

The Chicago metro area is the only place in the Midwest where I'd care to live at this point. Obviously not the case for every left-leaning Midwesterner but true for a lot of people I've known and probably emblematic enough to make a demographic difference.

Fuck you

― ¶ (DJP), Tuesday, January 3, 2017 11:18 PM

Fuck you.

done

No pretty much fuck you

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/schumer-says-hell-fight-to-keep-supreme-court-seat-vacant.html

Sure, but Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio etc. Current December are they? Big urban centers, scattered population Red State?

Greater Chicago is just way, way bigger than the other urban areas

Like, just glancing, nearly half of Wisconsin's population is Milwaukee and Madison.

Really not true if you mean city of Milwaukee and city of Madison. If you mean the Milwaukee metro area, that brings it up a lot (but closer to a third than half), but you're then including the Milwaukee suburbs, the hardest-right part of the whole state.

Whereas suburban Chicago has a lot of liberals.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/schumer-says-hell-fight-to-keep-supreme-court-seat-vacant.html

normally I hate this kind of stuff but you know what, fuck 'em, they deserve this

How can this be bad news?

Subjectively good news as it suits my personal preference, objectively bad news inasmuch as it furthers the institutional breakdown of the federal government. I feel the same about the idea of intransigent congressional dems.

Like, there must be better options than being this year's batch of stubborn assholes who bring everything to a grinding halt. But if that's the only tool we have in the box at the moment...

I thought we all agreed that the people now in charge were evil and wanted to do endless terrible things.

If that's the case then bringing things to a grinding halt and making nothing happen can only be good by comparison.

I think the GOP has proven "stubborn asshole" as a viable and effective political strategy

Pinefox OTM
Pistols at dawn is not a euphemism for nerf guns at noon

It probably will be at least somewhat effective, and it is good in comparison to what would happen if the GOP is unimpeded in their pursuits, but it still sucks that this is where we're at. Like the best we can aspire to is a government where the opposing parties keep one another in stalemate and nothing ever gets done.

I thought that was US government.

in the long-term, american politics being completely non-functional favors conservatives.

in the short-term, these guys are lunatics so we really do need to fight everything + recent history suggests we won't actually get punished by voters for it.

I'd argue in the short term it favors liberals, because the conservative long *and* short term goals are to overturn several key features of liberal policy. Stalling keeps the SC seat open, which would otherwise shift things for decades, the ACA intact, Roe v. Wade in place, etc. The status quo of rights and benefits is I'd argue acceptable, the proposed alternatives not.

The Chicago metro area is the only place in the Midwest where I'd care to live at this point. Obviously not the case for every left-leaning Midwesterner but true for a lot of people I've known and probably emblematic enough to make a demographic difference.

― DJ Untz Hall (Old Lunch), Wednesday, January 4, 2017 8:21 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there are a lot of cool places in the midwest dude. this is like saying "new york is the only place on the east coast where i'd live at this point" which is fine i guess but dismissive of dozens of other cool cities

i mean ffs lets not forget the margin of votes that made these states go red was only like 80,000

MI, WI, PA at least

The fact that I'd only want to live in Chicago is by no means a dismissal of other Midwestern cities. Plenty of places I dig, I just wouldn't want to live there. I lived in one of the two solidly-blue, non-Chicago metro counties in Indiana for years and I love it there but it's also surrounded on all sides by deep red which I found kind of a drag to deal with. And also I'm only speaking for myself.

Should be amusing watching old media flip the fuck out over the disrespectful, uncouth intransigence of the filthy Democrats in the Senate, and reading all the pieces about how the Senate is an undemocratic artifact that works against the will of Real Americans

The UK is not currently the same as the US, but if the UK had the most horrendous and frightening government (worse even than it does have) and I read that the opposition parties were going to stonewall, block, and do everything possible to stop the government doing anything -- I would be thrilled to find that someone was going to fight for good and that resistance was still possible. No ambivalence whatever.

I mean, I _am_ thrilled any time that opposition parties in the UK _do_ do this to a Con government - I shouldn't make it sound so hypothetical - it's just that it very rarely happens.

Is there any state that does not go blue to red the farther from a city you go? I mean, pick any blue city in America, drive an hour or so and you're basically in Texas. Drive across the county and you see some truly batshit insane things between urban population centers.

I think the difference (nb i am not an iatee) is that an urban area can be more spread out without being "suburban" in character. So like the greater Chicago metro area is very big AND is still "Chicago," it's not the Chicago suburbs. Whereas some of the right-est parts of Michigan are just outside Detroit in wealthy suburbs like Royal Oak even though they're not very far away.

Although let's be fair the real rightest part of Michigan is centered around the Calvinist slum that is Grand Rapids.

Is there any state that does not go blue to red the farther from a city you go? I mean, pick any blue city in America, drive an hour or so and you're basically in Texas. Drive across the county and you see some truly batshit insane things between urban population centers.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, January 4, 2017 9:58 AM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bunch of new england states fwiw

vermont doesn't have a major city

"you see some truly batshit insane things between urban population centers"

Like what?

Cracker Barrel

> <i>I'd argue in the short term it favors liberals, because the conservative long *and* short term goals are to overturn several key features of liberal policy. Stalling keeps the SC seat open, which would otherwise shift things for decades, the ACA intact, Roe v. Wade in place, etc. The status quo of rights and benefits is I'd argue acceptable, the proposed alternatives not.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, January 4, 2017 9:38 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink</i>

In what scenario can liberals "stall" and keep the SC seat open? Fact is, the GOP successfully stole a Supreme Court pick from Obama, an alt-right lunatic who made choosing a extreme conservative justice a key part of his campaign will make the next pick, and the Dems have a minority in the Senate and are thus powerless to do anything about it. Only if Trump picks such a wacko that several Republicans vote not to confirm can the Dems "stall", and that would likely only lead to a slightly less wacked-out replacement nominee that's more confirmable and would restore the 5-4 conservative majority.

I dunno, just reacting to that Schumer post. Maybe he'll host a sit-in.

Man, I've been talking with friends the last couple of weeks about all the confederate flags, or the right-wing billboards that pop up in who knows where. Virulently anti-abortion, anti-evolution... This is from friends who recently drove out west to CA from here, or friends visiting family this past holiday in Texas, Oklahoma or Kentucky. I mean, for god's sake there's a life sized Noah's Ark in Kentucky. My friend who was just visiting family in Kentucky, they stopped in Lafayette, IN, which is about half way (they have small kids so need to make stops), and they said the confederate flag presence was loud and proud.

Like what?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/rev%20arm.jpg

Three blocks from my house

Yeah, there could be and maybe possibly is an entire thread devoted to the can of worms your question opened, pinefox.

This seems like a reminder that despite the terrible and wanton things that are happening to my country, it still lacks some of the more insanely terrible things that your country has.

IN = historical base of the Klan fwiw

Xp

Having spent my high school years in rural Indiana, I'd say go watch the movie Gummo and realize that that's maybe only a slight exaggeration (and probably pretty much a documentary, depending on where you go).

up until this year this billboard said "JESUS is Lord, and You Know It!": https://sli.mg/kezvtD

hey everybody you do know there are dumb ignorant racist pieces of shit everywhere right, not just in the country

I don't believe anyone asserted otherwise?

xpost You might think it's a meaningless line, but I think there's a difference between someone who harbors dumb ignorant racist thoughts and someone who literally flies a Confederate flag. It definitely gets dramatically more prevalent and obvious the farther out you go. And you don't have to go far.

Yesssss I drove through one tiny corner of Indiana last week and I saw one (1) Father's Rights billboard (MRA in disguise), one (1) "God MADE the world--deny evolution" billboard, and stopped at the Cabela's hunting and outdoor supply store where they have statements in support of the 2nd amendment posted all over the place. And this was just outside Chicago.

my wife spent a summer after college living with friends in South Bend IN and speaks of it in the shuddering tones of an atrocity survivor

And South Bend is practically metropolitan for Indiana!

y'all are like one step away from "flyover country" jokes here, nagl

yes

fair enough.

y'all are like one step away from "flyover country" jokes here, nagl

― sleeve, Wednesday, January 4, 2017 10:44 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

Dude, I'm from 'flyover country', where all of my family and many of my friends still live. And I assure you that many within 'flyover country' have the same perspective.

Actually, one thing that I've found fairly heartening over the past several months is the number of people from my rural, red county high school who've been voicing their severe displeasure about the election results. Gives me some hope for change.

displeasure in what sense? like, they didn't want Trump elected to begin with, or they perceive him as not keeping promises, or something else?

my wife spent a summer after college living with friends in South Bend IN and speaks of it in the shuddering tones of an atrocity survivor

― his eye is on despair-o (Jon not Jon), Wednesday, January 4, 2017 10:39 AM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

genuinely curious, how bad could south bend be? it's a college town w/ a major research university (a conservative catholic one but still a world class university), 80% of the city voted for an openly gay mayor. ive been only once and don't remember much, but seemed like a regular small rustbelt city imo

All I remember about my one visit to South Bend is seemingly everybody having a story about how their parents/grandparents made a good living working for Studebaker before being suddenly thrust into poverty when that company shut its doors in 1963, and trying endlessly to lure new businesses into town ever since (see: Ignition Park) and mostly failing. I didn't run into any right-wing crazies.

y'all are like one step away from "flyover country" jokes here, nagl

― sleeve, Wednesday, January 4, 2017 10:44 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh for pete's sake I'm FROM there. Anyway I didn't see any such billboards in IL or MI, just in Indiana, which lest we forget *is* Mike Pence country.

I'm from 'flyover country' too, FTR, and want very badly to move back (but then MPLS-STPL still feels pretty sane to me)

Flyover urban areas are all pretty sane - you have to get down to Fort Worth, IIRC to find a major city that votes Republican and even that was 51-49 this time.

displeasure in what sense? like, they didn't want Trump elected to begin with, or they perceive him as not keeping promises, or something else?

― sleeve, Wednesday, January 4, 2017 9:53 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The former. It's cool to see that people I was friends with when we were young and apolitical were able to stay in the area and still develop and maintain perspectives that are at odds with the majority of their neighbors (as evidenced by many of the comments on the FB posts by said friends).

Sufjan Grafton iirc and I can talk South Bend if you want: it's a town with all the downsides of a big city (crime, poverty, racial strife) and of a small town (nothing to do, in the middle of nowhere). also winter lasts 10 months and it snows everyday.

so yeah regular small rustbelt city, true, but.

I'm from the Midwest and like it fine; it is full of friends and loved ones with similar worldviews and politics to my own. My brushes with right-wing looniness have been primarily in exurban (yet still nominally coastal) milieux like Carroll County Md. and Stafford, Va.

For me the distinction is much more urban vs. exurban rather than coastal vs. interior. (Suburban and actual rural places are both more of a mixed bag IME.) Another dynamic is moved-by-choice vs. born-here.

Cities skew liberal and are getting moreso not just because people who identify as liberals tend to want to move to cities, but because city dwelling tends to foster inclusiveness/diversity/permissiveness as features rather than bugs. In my exp, those who move to exurbs are more likely to be people who don't want to be around a lot of inclusiveness/diversity/permissiveness, and who seek space and isolation in which to exercise their idea of liberty.

South Bend is the only place in America I've truly felt out of place as a Jew.

the crucifixes in every classroom don't help, I imagine

can someone explain to me the difference between exurban and suburban

15 minute drive into town vs 30

i believe that's webster's definition and one that everyone here will agree with

for atlanta it's 45 minute drive to town vs. 2 hours

i don't really get the difference either

For me it's

Occasionally notice business signs that haven't been redesigned since the 60s = suburb

there's not some scientific definition, it just means 'not inner ring suburbs' usually

it also has a pejorative tinge because people who use words like 'exurbs' tend to be opposed to their existence

If you meet someone from out of state and they ask where you live and you say "around CITY" or "CITY area", you live in a suburb of that city, otherwise you're exurban.

hey britishes this is nagl over there amirite

http://static2.politico.com/dims4/default/0137026/2147483647/resize/1160x%3E/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2Fd9%2Fa1%2F635e5312446d95f4e39b7f9c225e%2F08-donald-trump-156-ap-1160.jpg

South Bend is the only place in America I've truly felt out of place as a Jew.

by the way I live in "flyover country" and like it here -- truth be told I like the Jewish community here better than the one on the Upper West Side of New York. This is really about South Bend particularly and not the Midwest generally.

As iatee suggests, in my world, suburbs may include inner-ring "streetcar suburbs" dating from the early 20th century, which may be outside city limits but nonetheless still have things like sidewalks, walkable shops and restaurants, reliable public transportation, and cultural institutions like theater/live music/etc. They sometimes feature economic and cultural diversity that is near to what might be found inside the limits of their adjacent cities. They may also be close enough to the city to be more or less indistinguishable from it, in terms of access to the city's cultural offerings.

Exurbs, to me, tend to be more recently developed and tend to have everything that people claim to loathe about suburbs - soulless, monotonous, architecturally dispiriting, too car-dependent, too culturally homogenous - while being sufficiently far from the nearest city to make it basically unusable.

If you think the distinction is too snobbish or too particular to my experience and the locations I know about, feel free to disregard.

exurb = What you might call a "bedroom town" I guess? Which is an incredibly weird term but one that applies to arguably most of the tri-state area.

I've known a lot of cool people from South Bend. Notably, none of them have lived anywhere near South Bend for a long time.

Ye Mad Puffin otm imo.

xps

"Exurbs" also originates I think from an attempt to get a more precise name for what's going on - "suburb" implies some kind of direct link between the city and this other place, most classically that people reside in one place and work in the other. At a certain point that really stopped being true of huge swaths of the new-built American landscape: people lived "out there" and commuted to other "out theres", taking advantage of interstates (especially ring roads) that were originally built to relieve and manage center-to-periphery commuter traffic. So if you live in a cul-de-sac in "suburb" X, and work in an office park in "suburb" Y, and shop at a mall in "suburb" Z, are any of them functionally "suburbs"? Of course, they may depend on bigger systems that would not be in place if the original downtown were not recognized as a city (airports, that highway money probably)... but still, you could easily live your whole life in "Atlanta" and only go into downtown or its original rings of commuter suburbs a handful of times. I grew up inside the perimeter and still only found myself downtown maybe a couple times a year, and essentially as a tourist visiting the Varsity, the World of Coke, or the Center for Puppetry Arts.

Like it's only the unholy financial necessity and behemoth economic power that make people commute three hours each way from, like, PA or CT. Likewise it's because of their outsized NYC salaries that they can afford to live in posh towns full of other upwardly mobile finance/exec people so far away that you wouldn't associate them with NYC at all.

Of course, they may depend on bigger systems that would not be in place if the original downtown were not recognized as a city (airports, that highway money probably).

This part rings especially true. Like 3/4ths of NJ would be farmland (and damn good farmland) with no public transit if not for NYC. Only 50 miles from Brooklyn you're in the Ramapo Mountains outside Mahwah, NJ and it's like the land that time forgot as far as the ppl are concerned--pickup trucks, Trump stickers, almost Appalachian-feeling...and yet you can be in Midtown for lunch.

see YMP's definition I grew up in an exurb, and yet the entire time I was growing up it was referred to as suburb/suburban. this exurban distinction is something I've only seen in the last decade or so, and def seems designed to be pejorative.

xp

I always simplified it as "exurbs" = "gated communities"

shakey it's probably not worth fretting about whether you're secretly an exurban native. these lines are blurry and 'exurb' is a subset of 'suburb' anyway. the term is mostly just there to help differentiate san mateo from vacaville.

It's an older term than that - coined in the 1950s! - and ime was not originally pushed as pejorative - though no doubt a lot of the planner- and smart-growth types who even need access to such words aren't super into the exurbs, for more substantive reasons.

would it be fair to say 'urban' is to 'suburban' as 'human' is to 'subhuman'?

just kidding. I live in a town that functions mainly as a bedroom community/suburb.

Apologies for DC-centric examples, but: in Maryland terms it's useful to distinguish Bethesda from Gaithersburg. Silver Spring from Burtonsville. In Virginia, it can be useful to distinguish Arlington from Manassas, or Alexandria from Woodbridge.

Sure this is a pretty minor point of terminology, but it doesn't work to assume everything outside city limits might as well be Levittown. There's no interesting difference between a single-family house in a quiet street that happens to be in Chevy Chase DC from a nearly identical house two blocks away in Chevy Chase Maryland. Calling the first one "urban" and the second "suburban" is silly.

I think the generally confusing thing is that 'suburban' is used to mean two different things
a. to describe an urban streetscape (single family houses, etc.)
b. to describe an area's position relative to an urban core

e.g. brooklyn is a manhattan suburb and also not particularly suburban

I think "I grew up in the suburbs" means a. for most people

It means b. for me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomburb

y hasn't Dylan recorded a song called boomburb blues? or has he idk

http://gizmodo.com/bernie-just-printed-a-gigantic-trump-tweet-and-brought-1790767297

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--87dpfKFR--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/khi5aolixgx83qzhghkb.jpg

I'd cheer about how great that is and relatively easy to do on the regular given his propensity for publicly contradicting himself except for that part where the only people who care are the people who are already worked up into a lather.

nah...pointing out Trump's blatant hypocrisy and baldfaced lies is something that needs to be done as often as possible.

Considering going down to DC on Inauguration Day, only thing keeping me from committing is a) weather, and b) high threat of violence/attacks. Was there 8 years ago for Obama's first, and it was so fucking cold, whole city was shoulder to shoulder for hours and hours, getting home was a nightmare but obviously all worth it to be there for a historic moment. Everyone was elated. Can't imagine the crazy energy & spectacle that'll be Trump's inauguration.

xpost I absolutely agree, however muted my righteous excitement may currently be.

but you'll miss billboards #1 artist Jackie Evancho's performance xp

Exurbs: Edge City is great on these.

In places like Minneapolis, I'd consider places like Minnetonka and Edina as suburbs, and places like Maple Grove and Eagan as exurbs. Places like Eden Prairie and Plymouth are half-and-half.

South Bend is the only place in America I've truly felt out of place as a Jew.

sad that this is true. when my maternal grandmother's parents came to this country they moved to south bend bc of its vibrant jewish community and i know they have some v old synagogues there. (i believe i still have family there that my mother has spoken to a few times over the years but i have no contact with.) there's this new yorker article i remember: http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/americas-only-ballpark-synagogue -- i guess after industry left all the jews did too?

Apologies for DC-centric examples, but: in Maryland terms it's useful to distinguish Bethesda from Gaithersburg.

See, and I would have said Bethesda and Gaithersburg are DC suburbs (Gaithersburg has two subway stops!) and Frederick is exurban. Poolesville/Damascus are boundary cases.

"Exurbs" sounds like something David Brooks created.

Mnuchin pukin'

The memo obtained by The Intercept alleges that OneWest rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions. In the memo, the leaders of the state attorney general's Consumer Law Section said they had "uncovered evidence suggestive of widespread misconduct" in a yearlong investigation.

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/

Re Jews in South Bend : the departments I know at the uni have been *very* successful in recruiting Jews, particularly those who fall on the Orthodox side, so there must be a strong community still.

Kamala Harris disappointed me in how she handled CA's mortgage crisis cases like Morbs' link above. She went the usual 'pay the corruption tax' settlement route instead of prosecuting.

said settlements were gigantic

so were the profits.

I worked on defending the enron honchos. If the government went after those guys they should go after these guys. 'Everyone was doing it' is a shit excuse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/opinion/why-rural-america-voted-for-trump.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0

Knoxville, Iowa — One recent morning, I sat near two young men at a coffee shop here whom I’ve known since they were little boys. Now about 18, they pushed away from the table, and one said: “Let’s go to work. Let the liberals sleep in.” The other nodded.

They’re hard workers. As a kid, one washed dishes, took orders and swept the floor at a restaurant. Every summer, the other picked sweet corn by hand at dawn for a farm stand and for grocery stores, and then went to work all day on his parents’ farm. Now one is a welder, and the other is in his first year at a state university on an academic scholarship.

lol do these people even know when teachers get up?

Shit, if only I'd known I don't have to get up at 5AM every day. Thanks, Obama!

counterpoint: teenagers are naturally dumb

I voted for Perot when I was 18, so yes.

Fwiw I don't think the article is wrong per se but it's incomplete and dumb.

In state capitols across America, lawmakers spend billions of dollars to take a few seconds off a city dweller’s commute to his office, while rural counties’ farm-to-market roads fall into disrepair.

No, they spend billions of dollars to make SIX MILLION PEOPLE'S COMMUTES BETTER not to mention the 50 million tourists from other places including Pella, Iowa who also benefit. I drove down a country road in Montague, Michigan last week that was so bad from the yearly freeze-thaw cycle that it was made of patches of asphalt about the size of your hand. It was terrible. You know how many drivers probably go down it per day? Maybe 5. And that's a high estimate. Also it was only marginally worse than half the streets in Bushwick, so....

while rural counties’ farm-to-market roads fall into disrepair

Get Big Government into fix them.

Sorry, not to use this thread for cheap shots, it's just that this is MY background he's talking about (and some others on here too!) and it didn't inevitably make me and lots of my peers into lickspittles and bigots. That's still a choice.

In state capitols across America, lawmakers spend billions of dollars to take a few seconds off a city dweller’s commute to his office, while rural counties’ farm-to-market roads fall into disrepair.

yea this is trash. isn't the return on tax dollars like, significantly higher in rural vs urban areas, "red" states vs "blue" states?

yup not even close

“Let’s go to work. Let the liberals sleep in.”

I'm going to be processing this one for a while.

What they don't tell you: Pella, IA, is like the largest concentration of Dutch Calvinist immigration after Holland, MI, so it's full of the same self-righteous workhouse-condemning ethos. For real. I'm not just salty at them because I had to spend 22 years floating in that sea, they're really terrible for everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoRH6Dp4Gjo

Russia intelligence hearings live^

Also, good point on TPM:

The fact that Republicans and the incoming Republican President are spending so much time insisting that Obamacare is the most horriblest, biggest failure ever is quite telling. Who do they need to convince?

if they can convince people it is a horrible failure, then it might not be as jarring when they turn it into a horrible failure

Rope-a-dope.

They should start promoting the narrative that real blue-blooded patriotic bootstrap Americans man up and die with dignity when it's their time instead of relying on pansy-ass 'Obamacare' to supply them with affordable 'healthcare'.

They basically already are tbf

Is this Sullivan dude drunk?

Well this doesn't sound good--

By scheduling six confirmation hearings for the same day, the Senate GOP is working to prevent any one Donald Trump nominee from dominating a news cycle. The gambit is very likely to succeed.
It’s no coincidence that Republican committee chairmen scheduled hearings for some of the president-elect’s most controversial and polarizing nominees next Wednesday.
Trump, after putting it off repeatedly, will also finally have his first press conference since the election at the same time. And Mitch McConnell plans a budget vote-o-rama, including votes related to the repeal of Obamacare. This will further distract the press and the public.
The GOP leadership’s approach will minimize unflattering process stories and prevent Trump’s nominees from receiving the kind of full airing and scrutiny that they would otherwise.

By scheduling six confirmation hearings for the same day, the Senate GOP is working to prevent any one Donald Trump nominee from dominating a news cycle. The gambit is very likely to succeed.
It’s no coincidence that Republican committee chairmen scheduled hearings for some of the president-elect’s most controversial and polarizing nominees next Wednesday.
Trump, after putting it off repeatedly, will also finally have his first press conference since the election at the same time. And Mitch McConnell plans a budget vote-o-rama, including votes related to the repeal of Obamacare. This will further distract the press and the public.
The GOP leadership’s approach will minimize unflattering process stories and prevent Trump’s nominees from receiving the kind of full airing and scrutiny that they would otherwise.[/I]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/01/05/daily-202-republicans-run-the-spread-offense-to-ram-through-donald-trump-s-cabinet-nominees/586d9c88e9b69b36fcfeafa6/?utm_term=.102f51e106de

re: the Russian intelligence hearings

oops-- x-post

Just the most nakedly craven coward fucks imaginable. You only do 'oh hey what's that thing over there?' distraction shit like that because you're trying to cover up actions that you KNOW people won't approve of.

Lindsey Graham now using hearings to say Obama was throwing a pebble and he wants to throw a rock. They are all using the hearing to belittle Obama.

Graham still looks and sounds like someone's aunt.

Graham clearly partisaning here.

And also incoherent.

In state capitols across America, lawmakers spend billions of dollars to take a few seconds off a city dweller’s commute to his office, while rural counties’ farm-to-market roads fall into disrepair. Some of the paved roads in my region are no longer maintained and are reverting to gravel. For a couple of generations now, services that were once scattered across rural areas have increasingly been consolidated in urban areas, and rural towns die. It’s all done in the name of efficiency.

my friend, Terry Branstad (R) was gov from 79-83 and again from 11-present

What they don't tell you: Pella, IA, is like the largest concentration of Dutch Calvinist immigration after Holland, MI, so it's full of the same self-righteous workhouse-condemning ethos. For real. I'm not just salty at them because I had to spend 22 years floating in that sea, they're really terrible for everyone.

― If authoritarianism is Romania's ironing board, then (in orbit), Thursday, January 5, 2017 8:59 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm duty bound to one-up your local geography and say that knoxville isn't pella, not hardly

Mr. Cotton also suggested that the conventional wisdom that Mr. Putin favored Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton might be wrong. Mr. Trump promised a stronger military and more American oil and gas production — policies Mr. Cotton suggested would not be to Russia’s advantage.

Huh wow. Hot take.

whereas trump promised handjobs to putin

more American oil and gas production — policies Mr. Cotton suggested would not be to Russia’s advantage.

Because there's no oil in Russia.

tom cotton has the same dead eyed ambition as paul ryan, except he was a vet and is currently a senator. im kind of afraid of him.

He's definitely more evil than Paul Ryan

but also dumber (not that that matters)

lol whoops I was going off "For me, it took a 2015 pre-caucus stop in Pella by J. C. Watts, a Baptist minister raised in the small town of Eufaula, Okla., who was a Republican congressman from 1995 to 2003, to begin to understand my neighbors — and most likely other rural Americans as well."

yeah, i think i heard about that visit

i'm kind of breaking your balls btw; it's not everyday your hometown gets written up in the times (badly)

i mean, the moral-theological stuff brought up is not great. pella (you're right about it's makeup) is a weird little one-off that's sliiightly different from the rural white conservatism that the article is trying to explain. i'd have to look it up but i think pella went hard for cruz

as did we all, of course

"tom cotton" lol can u make up a better name for a shitty southern senator

Yeah, it scans even worse when you see his nameplate, "Mr. Cotton." Just a generic evil southerner.

Man, these GOP dudes. I don't even know what they want.

"tom cotton" lol can u make up a better name for a shitty southern senator

― marcos, Thursday,

yes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sessions

who is that weird looking redneck rep in the house who had a big presence during the benghazi hearings? whenever i hear "tom cotton" i think it's that guy but it's not

ok i found him https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trey_Gowdy

RIP days when asshole racist southerner senators were named things like Strom and Howell and Bilbo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6-JddDUnyY

this is excellent: antimonopoly is a powerful idea

http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/januaryfebruary-2017/democrats-must-become-the-party-of-freedom/

works for me, let's go with that

Nancy Sinatra on some pro-Obama twitter rant for some reason

https://twitter.com/NancySinatra

obama or the cia needs to somehow declassify what they know about trump's links to russia. either he is over-leveraged financially there -- or being blackmailed -- or he isn't. the possibility is incredibly serious and the public has a right to know.

is he willfully acting suspicious wrt russia to bait a liberal overreaction? i think that's possible. if democrats bandy around conspiracies too he can truly say "both sides do it." dragging america down to his level is one of trump's specialties.

as usual, the simplest/dumbest explanation is probably the correct one - Trump wishes he was like Putin and has friendly business ties there. I don't see why anything more complicated or nefarious needs to be suggested, it's all p obvious afaict

Putin is a big tough guy running his country and making all his friends rich - ie, just like Trump sees himself

xpost See also: tax returns. See also: Trump trumpeting "people knew what they were getting in me!!!" People don't care, apparently.

when Putin's enemies get too randy he has them killed, just like Trump would like to do

lately someone told me they were afraid of getting into a nuclear war with North Korea, to which I was like, you know, I bet Trump and Kim Jong-Un would get along pretty well, they seem to like the same things.

that said, Trump's extensive praise of Putin (dating back to 2013!), to the point where playing friendly with Russia has been essentially his ONLY consistent position, is quite suspicious

I'm not saying it's not bad - it is! - but there isn't really a mystery there. Trump does not contain depths.

I just thought it was because Russian banks are the only ones who'll lend him money anymore

Deutsche Banke is German

yes but trump thinks theyre dutch, complicating matters even further

Ryan saying they officially are gonna defund PP... not surprising but the speed kind of is

not surprising but the speed kind of is

The speed is essential, because any delay allows your opponents time to organize resistance. Since most of what they plan to push through is not exactly popular, but rather consists of rewards for key interest groups like the rich and fundamentalists, it is best to dole them out as fast as you can, after which inertia is on your side.

I like the idea of having a dialogue with Trump supporters. I think we should do more of that.

Me: So Trump supporter, what do you want to see in the coming years?
Trump guy: I want to see your body crumpled up in a pool of blood and with bones popping out of your limbs, you liberal f*g.
Me: Good to know.
Democratic/liberal establishment: We must appeal to Trump supporters more!
Me: Uhhh ... I'm not sure I like that idea so much.

The opposition leadership in the Democrats/liberal establishment is insulated from the worst of what Trump could/will do, and what his movement is empowering, so they don't give a single fuck whatsoever. They don't care about Planned Parenthood, they've got money and connections to the best of what the world has to offer.

They don't care about the ACA being revoked because of the above. They don't care about the culture of violence/hate that targets everyone except Trump supporters because they live in tiny bubble enclaves with huge gates and societies separate from the one we live in. We're on our own out here, baby.

i don't recognize that society as the one i live in.

i think trump won because 1.) he was guaranteed a bunch of votes to start because of how divided our country is and 2.) he was able to coordinate a massive disinformation campaign that confused voters into thinking clinton was a corrupt criminal, an impression she barely even tried to argue agains. (too busy "going high.")

Yeah, the society you live in is Princeton, NJ, if I remember correctly. I rest my case.

that feels pretty ad hominem. you don't know anything about what my life has been like.

in any case, there is a lot of hatred and bigotry in this country but trump wasn't elected by 60 million wannabe serial killrs.

i only needed a half arsed takeup in order to make a classic 'netherlending story' pun that could in itself have started your dumbass country on the road to healing but ye had to veer off didnt ye. ye wont be helped thats the problem.

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/tweet_zpsw9a6jfi2.png

"And who's gonna pay for the wall?"

"Mexico Congress!"

why doesn't he fucking pay for it himself if he wants it so goddamned bad

^^^

Next step is "Sorry folks, I tried, but Congress wouldn't approve the money! But I'm still your hero, right? Right? Look, over there - a New York Times reporter! Get her!"

It was horrible how he encouraged his crowds to hiss and boo at katy tur

she pretty

Treeship, you're right, this stuff is pretty funny now that I think about it. I should just lighten up and roll with the chuckles.

?

i am not joking. i really thought it was terrible and atrocious how he would single out individual journalists for harassment.

If you think that's the worst of Trump, I'm surprised you haven't hanged yourself yet like a Lovecraft protagonist.

Man, what is your problem

It's called, "giving a shit".

You should probably ease up on the drunkposting

What he said

I've seen the horrors this world has to offer, and have met people who know the same. This world isn't done yet with that, even on American shores. I've seen the shattered lives from war, torture, violence, death, discrimination. Trump, imo, is a piece of shit for stoking these fires, for promoting torture, for welcoming and promoting neo Nazis and hatemongers who obey the commands of his clique of scumbags, and things haven't even begun yet.

"What's your problem?" My problem is that I've seen the lives broken, shattered, dead from the bullshit Trump indulges in. Fuck that. I guess it's just a fact of the world I have to accept and walk around shrugging about it, but it still fucking sucks. Not that Obama was a saint at all, but Trump is just glorying in this stuff.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_in_rain_monologue#/media/File%3ATears_In_Rain.png

Yeah, torture victims, war refugees, that's pretty funny stuff. See, that's all I need, Outis, a new attitude.

Like, I need to learn how to laugh at these people more.

Jesus christ, dude, grip the fucking reins already.

http://stantonattree.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Stanton-logo-transparent.png

I love how having compassion and empathy, and expressing outrage for a torture-loving, bellicose, war-monger authoritarian like Trump is considered losing one's grip. That about says it all, folks. We're beyond normalization here, people.

https://i.imgur.com/ZM5WS1W.jpg

No, 'reactionary histrionics triggered by poor reading comprehension' is the sign of losing one's grip in this particular instance.

Like, you're so OTT at this point that I honestly can't tell anymore whether you're just fucking around.

We're beyond normalization here, people.

Treesh saying it "was horrible how he encouraged his crowds to hiss and boo at katy tur" is the exact opposite of normalization, bro. You were the one belittling this atrocity. btw, it matters not if Trump is normal or abnormal. what matters is what he does and what we do. you seem to be following the motto: when in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. under the circumstances it is permissible to say get a grip.

I'm a very passionate person, that's my deal. Let's just fight this out in the ILX Octagon, I'll take you all on at once.

xp

You should probably ease up on the drunkposting

― THE SKURJ OF FAKE NEWS. (kingfish), Thursday, January 5, 2017 8:06 PM Bookmark Flag Post

just joined the thread to FP larry

(like you don't have a monopoly on feeling horrible about the impending Trumpidency, so stop acting like it? idk)

Maybe. I do mean it, though, I have a permanently broken jaw for standing up for others against the bullshit I'm talking about here. My passion is real, because I know how horrible this world can be. I know most people don't get the way I feel and how I express myself, whatever. Carry on, FP, whatever, I know I'm a weirdo.

You're not a weirdo, you're just being a bad poster atm.

Maybe. It's just really frustrating watching this poison slowly drip and infect us all, and to have everyone just ... let it happen. I guess that's life, right?

to have everyone just ... let it happen.

OK. what precisely would you have us do (and how do you know we aren't doing it)? afaics, I could say with as much justice, larry appleton is just... letting it happen. bcz making anguished noises on the interweb is all I can see you doing atm. if this is a disservice to you and you are doing much more, think a moment that you might be doing an equal disservice to those you are addressing. Passion is no excuse for not thinking.

The first step is deprogramming yourself of the bullshit we've been fed for the past few decades, which is all over the place on here, it shares the same bond with Trump. That's where change begins, from the inside, then expressed outside. That's what I've been attempting to do, but I just look like a fool here. I don't think my vision for things could ever exist in the world as it is, so I might as well just write a book about it that no one will read.

I remember in middle school I did an experiment that was pretty Trump-like, and it caused a full-scale riot, cops brought in, news, principal fired. It's way too easy to get people to respond to hate, power, viciousness, bullying, in-group, out-group, strong vs. weak, than it is for love, which is a sad fact of life, I guess. Whatever. I'm an idiot for being an idealist, I'll just go on my way and spare you all my shitposting.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51Vx0oQWMHL._SX302_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

So what you are trying to do here is deprogram yourself? Go right ahead. Sounds like a great project. But that shouldn't involve throwing shade on other people who are just trying to cope with this new dismal reality themselves.

Or perhaps you meant you are trying to deprogram us? Sorry. That seems kind of outside your portfolio. And there are about 8000 registered ilxors. Seems to me deprogramming is a pretty individualized process. I don't think you'll be successful trying to run it as a batch job.

Go back to Go and do not collect $200. But do keep thinking about things.

Maybe you should try out the excellent thread Depression and What It's really Like. It might be a better fit for you right now.

It's worked better than you think, my friend, I'm a professional from a family of professionals. Anyway, enough of me being a jagoff, it's time for me to disappear into the mists.

So, are you claiming to have deprogrammed us using your professional juju? Or are you just saying that blatting your feelings all over this thread has been helpful to you? In that case, you should thank us.

You're welcome.

"How I defeated Trump by being a dick to Treeship when he didn't deserve it"

Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got "swamped" (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT. So much for....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

being a movie star-and that was season 1 compared to season 14. Now compare him to my season 1. But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

"who cares, he supported Hillary" gonna be our official motto for the next four years

'ratings machine'

It's going to be interesting to see by what means this piece of trash fails to make it through an entire four years as president. My money is on some sort of Julius Caesar scenario at the moment.

those trump tweets depress the fuck out of me!
it's so unconvincingly ridiculous that this is our president

like i'm in awe of my own ability to hate this guy more every day

I thought that forcing myself to stop looking at his Twitter was going to be a balm for my harried brain but that's just the news now. Like every Trump comment in every article is just a repost of his tweets. I wish the media would just be like 'President-elect Trump has yet to comment via any legitimate channel of communication'.

But thankfully he's going to straighten up and fly right and behave in a manner befitting the highest office of the land after the inauguration. I can totally feel it, in my bones.

has trump started to refer to himself more in the third person lately or is it just that i'm paying more attention to his twitter?

my only consolation over the next four years is gonna be watching disillusioned Trump voters come to the realization that this guy was, shockingly enough, exactly who he appeared to be

thinking about it those Apprentice tweets are just distraction from the intel meeting he has today

I very much doubt many will be that reflective

love how this debate about "building a wall" has basically become "who should pay for it???? did trump break a promise????" huh pretty great

:(

Much of the fight in the near future is going to be reiterative variations of 'NO, THE GOALPOSTS ARE RIGHT WHERE YOU FIRST PUT THEM UP AND THAT'S WHERE THEY'RE FUCKING STAYING.'

Yeah idk about distraction for this one, the dude is just a dick and loves to tweet. He insulted Martha Stewart when she did her version of the apprentice too.

I mean, he wasn't president then, but who actually expected this man to change in any way?

Maybe Twitter isn't the right platform. He should try something more subtle like shitting in his hand and flinging it around aimlessly.

my only consolation over the next four years is gonna be watching disillusioned Trump voters come to the realization that this guy was, shockingly enough, exactly who he appeared to be

my Thatcherite BREXIT step-dad reckons Trump's a champion of the common man and that liberals like me have judged this book by its cover. Let me tell you this, there is nothing that will make people like him see that they've been suckered in by a garishly transparent grifter. They're too invested in the bullshit.

They mentioned in passing on the radio this morning that repealing the ACA could add $1 trillion to the national debt. The Freedom Caucus, totally consistent, austerity-minded dollar-watching stalwarts that they are, called it a "sacrifice." Some other GOP guy called it "symbolic." But then some third GOP guy quietly zinged back that if it was only symbolic they might have picked a much better number than $1 trillion.

xpost These people are like domestic abuse survivors. He's shown no interest in or capacity for growth or change. Ever. Throughout his multiple decades as a public figure. He's never going to change. If anything, he's just going to shed all former impediments in his journey towards becoming a creature of unfettered id.

He's still not president yet, but coverage of dude seems especially negative as we approach D-Day. He's reportedly feuding with Mattis, Woolsey resigned, the ACA repeal is going to be a clusterfuck, he's saying taxes will pay for his stupid wall that Mexico will pay back "later," he's feuding over TV ratings (!), no one wants to come to his DC party, all the intelligence people and everyone in Congress agreed about Russia, which he's finally being briefed on and can't avoid so how is he going to respond afterward, that they're all liars? Maybe. And even for this dickhead he's been super active online in the most embarrassing fashion. The next few days/weeks/months/years are going to be an exhausting mess.

What is coverage like on the conservative spectrum? Are any of them antsy over him yet? What about NRO - Alfred, what's the word over there?

why are you making me click

I scrolled through two pages and found nothing Trump-related except tangentially (i.e. the Sessions "smear").

Roy Edroso reads NRO so you guys don't have to.

all the intelligence people and everyone in Congress agreed about Russia

Like you and me, most members of Congress haven't seen jackshit evidence on this. O save us, deep state...

My impression has been that NRO has kept the anti-Trumpist faith and been much less craven than I expected. (What's expected is that they're taking the line "like Obama, he is a narcissistic would-be emperor", but I think this is about the best you could hope for.)

yea, a lot of posts also read like trump hasn't happened, or is an afterthought. much is the same old NRO shit

tbf i also have the impulse to pretend trump hasn't happened, how can any human not

Let me tell you this, there is nothing that will make people like him see that they've been suckered in by a garishly transparent grifter. They're too invested in the bullshit

Yeah, this is going to lead to no shortage of continued handwriting clueless and naïve liberal commentators and pundits churning endless pages of "SURELY they'll stop believing in him this time!" It's why I think we need more ex-con men and grifters and people who analyze them just to better explain to how victims of a con will do anything, including doubling-down, than to admit they've been taken.

I have a lot of related reading topics lined up for the new year and beyond (e.g. con artists, child psychology, narcissism, cults and deprogramming, etc.). We're all of us going to need to change our perspectives and approaches some to deal with what's around the corner.

Just look at people in a pyramid scheme/cult and how they rationalize things pointed out to them.

Or Scientology.

@Schwarzenegger: I wish you the best of luck and I hope you'll work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings.

Or Scientology.

Or Catholics.

or the DNC

Scientology and Mormonism, there is a paper trail of crimes and facts that must be refuted/ignored. They seem like better analogies.

He's still not president yet, but coverage of dude seems especially negative as we approach D-Day. He's reportedly feuding with Mattis, Woolsey resigned, the ACA repeal is going to be a clusterfuck, he's saying taxes will pay for his stupid wall that Mexico will pay back "later," he's feuding over TV ratings (!), no one wants to come to his DC party, all the intelligence people and everyone in Congress agreed about Russia, which he's finally being briefed on and can't avoid so how is he going to respond afterward, that they're all liars? Maybe. And even for this dickhead he's been super active online in the most embarrassing fashion. The next few days/weeks/months/years are going to be an exhausting mess.

this seems p otm to me

"Continued handwringing" I should say

And now Trump talks to the Times for 8 minutes to basically ramble defensively ... *before* the briefing? So weird, this guy.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump said in an interview Friday morning that the storm surrounding Russian hacking during the presidential campaign is a political witch hunt being carried out by his adversaries, who he said were embarrassed by their loss to him in the election last year.

Mr. Trump spoke to The New York Times by telephone three hours before he was set to be briefed by the nation’s top intelligence and law enforcement officials about the Russian hacking of American political institutions. In the conversation, he repeatedly criticized the intense focus on Russia.

“China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names,” he said, referring to the breach of computers at the Office of Personnel Management in late 2014 and early 2015. “How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt.”

He noted that there have been prior successful hackings of the White House and Congress, suggesting it was unfair that those attacks on American institutions have not received the attention that the Russian cyberintrusions have. But none of the information from those intrusions was made public as it was in the case of the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

“With all that being said, I don’t want countries to be hacking our country,” Mr. Trump said. “They’ve hacked the White House. They’ve hacked Congress. We’re like the hacking capital of the world.”

Mr. Trump, who has consistently expressed doubts about the evidence of Russian hacking during the election, did so again on Friday. Asked why he thought there was so much attention being given to the Russian cyberattacks, the president-elect said the motivation was political.

“They got beaten very badly in the election. I won more counties in the election than Ronald Reagan,” Mr. Trump said during an eight-minute telephone conversation. “They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it’s a witch hunt. They just focus on this.”

The president-elect also noted reports this week that the D.N.C. had refused to give the F.B.I. access to its computer servers after it was hacked.

“The D.N.C. wouldn’t let them see the servers,” Mr. Trump said. “How can you be sure about hacking when you can’t even get to the servers?” The D.N.C. has previously said that the law enforcement agency had not asked to examine the computers.

A senior law enforcement official said the F.B.I. had repeatedly emphasized to the D.N.C. the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data. The F.B.I. was rebuffed and had to rely upon a third party — a computer security firm brought in by the D.N.C. — for information.

He also said that the hacking of emails from the D.N.C. and top campaign officials for Mrs. Clinton had revealed that Mrs. Clinton received advance notice of debate questions and “many, many other things that were horrible.”

“How come nobody complains about that?” Mr. Trump said, referring to a tip that a CNN commentator and Clinton supporter, Donna Brazile, gave to Mr. Podesta ahead of a Democratic Party presidential debate in Flint, Mich.

Mr. Trump said he was looking forward to his meeting Friday afternoon about the hacking by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, and other intelligence officials. He said that Mr. Clapper “wrote me a beautiful letter a few weeks ago wishing me the best.”

But he said that “a lot of mistakes were made” by the intelligence community in the past, noting in particular the attacks on the World Trade Center and saying that “weapons of mass destruction was one of the great mistakes of all time.”

The president-elect said that he was eager to work with the intelligence community as president, and he praised the people he selected to lead the intelligence agencies, in particular Representative Mike Pompeo, Republican of Kansas, who is his pick to lead the C.I.A.

He said that Mr. Pompeo was “first in his class” at West Point.

“We have great people going into those slots,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “I expect to have a very, very good relationship with them.”

my Thatcherite BREXIT step-dad reckons Trump's a champion of the common man

I still marvel at the cognitive dissonance required to believe this; Trump has an extensive, much-publicized history of grifting and scamming the common man, lives in a golden tower, and travels by private jet. He's crafted a life for himself so utterly unlike anyone else on the planet. That "blue-collar billionaire" line was so laughably transparent and yet his base ate it up cuz he made Ivanka sell lemonade to his servants. I'm boggled.

These people are like domestic abuse survivors. He's shown no interest in or capacity for growth or change. Ever.

I get the point you are trying to make about Trump supporters and closed worldviews but can I politely suggest a different analogy? This is a pretty awful stereotype with which to paint survivors, especially since it suggests that having been a victim of something means the onus to change is on you (aka it was somehow your fault). I don't think you think that about abuse survivors, just urging you to think through the use of comparisons like this, and what kinds of other work they do, intentional or no.

yes thank you ^^^

Perhaps not the cleanest analogy, but the point I was trying to make was that Trump is the abuser with the unwillingness to change or grow in this scenario. I do feel a degree of sympathy for his supporters (however small and tempered) because his one demonstrable skill is taking advantage of others' trust in him, and they're clearly ill-equipped to reckon with the grift.

“China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names,” he said, referring to the breach of computers at the Office of Personnel Management in late 2014 and early 2015. “How come nobody even talks about that? This is a political witch hunt.”

because nobody ever spent a second of their lives giving a fuck about the OPM

Worth pointing out that, rather than waiting and twisting terms that have already been used pejoratively against him and his actions, he is in this instance preemptively devaluing the term 'witch hunt' through misuse so that it'll be sufficiently depleted of power by the time the left will inevitably be forced to employ it.

yeah. he's like a language terrorist.

I wish someone would take him on a Snipe hunt.

He also said that the hacking of emails from the D.N.C. and top campaign officials for Mrs. Clinton had revealed that Mrs. Clinton received advance notice of debate questions and “many, many other things that were horrible.”

“How come nobody complains about that?” Mr. Trump said, referring to a tip that a CNN commentator and Clinton supporter, Donna Brazile, gave to Mr. Podesta ahead of a Democratic Party presidential debate in Flint, Mich.

This is almost literally all I heard about from Steinbots in the two weeks before the election.

Is Cheney available?

xp

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15873518_809230999225674_2728732338644964849_n.jpg?oh=6613493264cd4c91a3b3b4fcf25f3ad4&oe=58EC5B9A

sorry for posting a meme but this is kind of funny

http://i.imgur.com/I0DVa5K.png

Re: that cartoon, I will be very very very very very very very surprised if he doesn't extemporize at all while being sworn in. It's like a fucking tic that he can't break. It's true.

He's still not president yet, but coverage of dude seems especially negative as we approach D-Day

yeah i mean it's better than it should be but it's extremely negative for an incoming president. from his POV (and doubtless some of his supporters) all publicity is good publicity though.

Old Lunch, thanks for responding. I maintain that the comparison is ill-advised at the least, but I'll rest my case here.

The next few days/weeks/months/years are going to be an exhausting mess.

yes. and tawdry, too. all the more so for those who do not consciously take a break from it every once in a while.

xpost It's cool, Doc C. No desire to cause offense, so apologies if I did so.

So some of the hacking info is supposed to get declassified this afternoon.

did you just say... oppo dump?

those were the good ol days huh

waiting for the dump

late check-in: i'm still preparing that big dump i was hyping up a couple days before the election. i know this is a little boy cried wolfy, but you have to believe me that when it finally drops it is going to change everything, and i mean everything.

the dump is full-sized and is currently reorienting itself inside of me so that it can be delivered as smoothly as possible when the time comes

Blessig u ZS, I believe you are waiting for juuuuuuust the right moment

it's going to be a home dump, in the bathtub

with plastic sheets and blankets everywhere, ready to catch every last morsel

http://youtu.be/F4vsrBfYx8w?t=1m55s

I guess he released a statement. Its nice that he tweets so much because when something like this is released you know for a fucking fact he didn't write it.

I just want to know if this Russia thing is being overblown or not. If there aren't ties between Trump and the Kremlin I'd rather the media focus their outrage on what's happening to the ACA right now.

Oh boy, a mass shooting in Florida. Just in time.

The Democrats would look like idiots if they are really trying -- as some have worried -- to pull off some McCarthy smear on a guy who they could nail in a million other ways

Could they though? I mean, what other ways? The guy is a crook and a sex criminal everybody knows it, and millions of people simply don't care.

their gamble is that people want a bad-guy enemy. not a super bad bet imo

So, someone has now built this:

http://www.trumptwitterarchive.com/#/archive

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition staff has issued a blanket edict requiring politically appointed ambassadors to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day, according to several American diplomats familiar with the plan, breaking with decades of precedent by declining to provide even the briefest of grace periods.

The mandate — issued “without exceptions,” according to a terse State Department cable sent on Dec. 23, diplomats who saw it said — threatens to leave the United States without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain. In the past, administrations of both parties have often granted extensions on a case-by-case basis to allow a handful of ambassadors, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, has taken a hard line against leaving any of President Obama’s political appointees in place as he prepares to take office on Jan. 20 with a mission of dismantling many of his predecessor’s signature foreign and domestic policy achievements. “Political” ambassadors, many of them major donors who are nominated by virtue of close ties with the president, almost always leave at the end of his term; ambassadors who are career diplomats often remain in their posts.

A senior Trump transition official said there was no ill will in the move, describing it as a simple matter of ensuring that Mr. Obama’s overseas appointees leave the government on schedule, just as thousands of political aides at the White House and in federal agencies must do. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about internal deliberations, said the ambassadors should not be surprised about being held to a hard end date.

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/us/politics/trump-ambassadors.html?_r=0

my only consolation over the next four years is gonna be watching disillusioned Trump voters come to the realization that this guy was, shockingly enough, exactly who he appeared to be

there is nothing that will make people like him see that they've been suckered in by a garishly transparent grifter

victims of a con will do anything, including doubling-down, than to admit they've been taken

I can see this but doubt at the same time I doubt it's relevant to the population you're talking about. IME the election of Trump was all they wanted, and it is probably all the victory they really need. As they see it, government wasn't doing shit for them beforehand (in fact, in their eyes it seemed to be actively out to get them). So what do they have to lose by voting with their middle fingers?

Many of these people don't actually care what happens post-January. They got what they nihilistically wanted, and it is enough. For those who voted with their middle fingers as a way to stick it to everybody who has ever voluntarily worn a tie? What difference does it make if Trump really builds the wall or really registers all the mooslems or really changes libel laws or really brings back coal mining?

They don't give a shit. All politicians are crooked, this one just happens to be particularly forthright about it, and in any case it's a refreshing change from the people who were all earnest and shit about how much they wanted to serve the people.

otfm

I don't know what kind of predictions I'm willing to make based on how people voted this time around. More people voted for her, a huge percentage of people didn't vote at all, a hunk of his voters voted for indirected reasons (protest, didn't like her, fucking around), the latter point mattering a lot when we're talking about an election won by such a small practical margin to begin with. I assume there will always be the same minority of die-hards, some 35% or whatever, but imo there is a lot more reason to predict the number of people who don't like Trump will increase than there is that the opposite will occur, short America instantly becoming great again.

xxpost I mean...swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills seems like so much more preferable an option than going through life like that, but to each their own, I guess.

how many people are there out there who actually like trump and think he is going to do good things for them/the nation? i am getting mixed ideas about the nature of his supporters: on the one hand are garrison keillor and michael moore, who talk about cynical voters giving a "middle finger" to the system, but on the other hand i hear people saying that he is building a cult of personality and that his followers will never turn on him no matter what he does.

i don't know any trump supporters who aren't accelerationist marxists, and they're not really "supporters." but i think a lot of his support is like that -- not really support, but opposition. they affirm him only as a negation of other things they don't like.

in which case, like rebellious teenagers, they can be "scared straight" if the democrats get their act together.

maybe

ugh fuck those people

Hoooooo boy at the declassified Intel report

details plz, or link

wait it's out? do i need a what.cd invite?

http://bbc.in/2iN5LA2

That yall were on twitter tbh

why are you people still nattering on about November

It's fucking over.

repetition compulsion bro we're traumatized

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1g_erNWEAArbFQ.jpg

Full pdf: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

ctrl F "Putin"

p damning

oh thx LBI

There is nothing new in there and more than half the report is just restating stuff already in the public domain about RT - so nothing further on the hacking. Seems like another missed opportunity.

Re: that cartoon, I will be very very very very very very very surprised if he doesn't extemporize at all while being sworn in. It's like a fucking tic that he can't break. It's true.

After they made Obama redo it for getting one word not exactly right.

this is an official document casting a shadow on an incoming administration to an unprecedented degree

xp

Shakey otm. And this coming what, two hours after trump tweeting whatever 'hacks' made didn't influence the result at all?

Doesn't it say somewhere that Putin literally ordered it to happen? That's the headline making the rounds right now.

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US
presidential election

page 2

Ah yes

they need to establish a connection between the kremlin and someone in trump's inner circle for this to mean anything to people who aren't already predisposed to hate trump.

you don't get impeached for stuff other people did without your knowledge.

this report is essentially the conclusions section of a much longer document, with all the evidence redacted.

So NOT just "restating stuff", that's big and now officially stated.

xposts

with all the evidence redacted

how convenient

yup

a man with a record of dishonesty arguing with a community with a record of dishonesty, and no details. sure to benefit us all.

The "high level of confidence" assessment had been leaked to the press back in December.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/15/vladimir-putin-personally-directed-russian-hack-us-election/

Having it in an official document is a new development.

caek is correct that it's the conclusion to a longer document but the conclusions seem to be the ones that Obama set out when the sanctions were imposed a fortnight ago. What it doesn't, and possibly can't, do in an unredacted form, is provide any further solid evidence - which the previous security guidance report was also criticised for lacking.

Xps

GOP tactic is clearly gonna be "this is Obama's fault, he let it happen"

(ie shit Graham said yesterday iirc)

this does box Trump in a bit, I think. What's he supposed to say, "I'm gonna punish those guys that helped me get elected"? "I'm not gonna do anything"? He has no good options.

there seems like some digs in here against trump - the line about russia working better with people who have business ties to russia and the big long ass section on RT, where Michael Flynn has been known to hang out

up to this point his tactic has been just to deny it, but that's not tenable moving forward

xp

i get why it is the way it is, but the conclusions are quite strongly worded and should "dominate the news cycle" as the dead-eyed say

why was he denying that russia was involved in the dnc and podesta hacks if he isn't implicated in some way????

still want the hard numbers of votes that were flipped by "damn, John Podesta really hates Glenn Greenwald"

Because being assisted by a foreign government would look bad even f he had nothing to do with it. Xp

it was millions because 1.) nobody read "the emails" so 2.) the contents of the emails was a perfect blank screen for trump to project his lies, which built on years of republican hysteria/paranoia wrt hillary

xp

https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2017/01/06/National-Security/Images/Trump_53073.jpg-08756-0620.jpg?uuid=iAdtJtQvEeaUWnb2mjmd1Q

like, the constant drip drip of emails was the perfect backdrop to the disinformation campaign. so even if trump and russia weren't working together, there was a nice synchronicity between his propaganda and theirs. that's what happened, dr. morbius.

and yes, hillary should have had way better communications people to counteract this but hey

haha you know where that goes JiC

http://i.imgur.com/ZK682Aq.gif

and yes, hillary should have had way better communications people to counteract this

Or maybe like some kind of compelling and convincing vision of the country to promote

She could have just said she was going to make America greater than Trump will.

omg you guys fucking drop it already

https://i.imgur.com/QnxoYkH.jpg
lol

Not that it makes one bit of difference, but it is rich for the guy who claimed the election was rigged and dismissed Russian interference to learn the Russians interfered, trying to rig the election, but it doesn't matter, because he won.

yup

All, I might add, not that I need to, while encouraging the Russians to interfere while praising their leader.

still want the hard numbers of votes that were flipped by "damn, John Podesta really hates Glenn Greenwald"

geez it's like you're pretending "the DNC rigged the primary against Bernie" wasn't a two-week news cycle during the convention

like, the constant drip drip of emails was the perfect backdrop to the disinformation campaign

so, the key to the whole thing was stupid low-info voters and not the contents of anything. got it.

@ggreenwald
This new report: 1) literally half of it is about RT; 2) contains same assertions made multiple times; 3) includes no evidence for claims.

thick as a brick, that guy

"assertions made multiple times" are different from an official document. Whatever he does now is going to make him look worse. He's entering office under a cloud of suspicion/illegitimacy that is totally unpresidented for an incoming president. This is bad for Trump and good for the rest of us.

can you tell us what dennis the perrin has to say about this

it's all so stupid. people were living in cartoon world the whole election. "hillary" became a signifier of all these shadowy insinuations and 60% of america seemed ready to believe the worst about her, which is why something like "pizzagate" was able to gain steam. (how much -- who knows? it's very hard to quanitfy the impact of the internet noise machine.) none of the awful insinuations had anything to do with things she actually did. there was plenty in her record that was questionable, but the things people were angry about were amorphous scandals they couldn't explain. "benghazi" and "emails." even the opposition to obamacare is based in delusion. it's not a big government/socialized medicine bill, it's a series of industry reforms designed to broaden the revenue base of the insurance companies so they can afford to cover people with pre-existing conditions who cost the insurers money. like, hate the bill if you want but explain it first.

sorry for the rant, but it is very disturbing how disconnected "hillary" as a media construct was from the (flawed) reality of the candidate. we can't have a democracy if people don't know what they are talking about.

so like, fine. hate hillary morbs. hate the democrats. but don't pretend their losing was a reflection on what they actually did because they weren't allowed to run on their records this time. the disinformation was so thick.

lol Morbs, of course it wasn't about the actual content. it was about pizzagate and spirit cooking and anything that you wanted to confirm your "Hillary is evil incarnate" bias. It was about "Bernie never had a chance". If you don't think that influenced a chunk of voters, you're kidding yourself.

This is bad for Trump and good for the rest of us.

I get the first part but I'm not seeing what the "good" outcome of all this will/could be.

3) includes no evidence for claims.

people do understand why they're not telling you the exact ways they intercept and analyze cyber traffic,right?

i'd have to believe that shit is in ht full report . i mean wtf

did you believe the Iraq/WMD fairytale as well?

I get the first part but I'm not seeing what the "good" outcome of all this will/could be.

presidents distracted by scandal/playing defense don't accomplish much

which means (as before) the real place to keep our eye is going to be on congress

let's get smarter voters then, hey?

yes carne, no one expects declassification, so let's just trust every word from Jimmy Clapper as we always have

did you believe the Iraq/WMD fairytale as well?

― sleeve, Friday, January 6, 2017 5:12 PM (twenty-seven seconds ago)
it's not the same thing. come on

"No sir... Not wittingly."

curious to know what high level advanced cyber techniques they're not telling us that allowed them to state this with high confidence. sounds like message board-level insight to me.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1hLZjtUoAAcKTj.jpg

would really REALLY like to quarantine all this post-election "what went wrong" shit into some other thread, it is beyond tiresome at this point

xp

we could just ban everyone doing it

maybe I'll just start fp'ing people

haha Dan

do I hear a motion?

seconded

motion carries

this whole report is about "what went wrong" in the election

RIP Treeship

a big win for the gawker diaspora

https://twitter.com/Schwartzesque/status/817494775163211777

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1hSvRkWIAAZtHA.jpg

it's realy sad, he was a tree AND a ship

fp'd xxp

make that two

this whole report is about "what went wrong" in the election

no, it is about what happens moving forward. as stated (so many times I've lost count) this was all p well known during the campaign, what's shifted now is that there is open disagreement/warfare between the intelligence community and the incoming administration, and what is significant about that is how it will impact Trump's effectiveness as President. rehashing the outcome of the election is largely irrelevant to current issues before us.

definitely agree that the effect of this will be to cast a pall over trump's presidency

the report's conclusions have the ring of truth, but it doesn't really stand up to any scrutiny on its own (especially given e.g. those passages i posted) and isn't going to change anyone's minds.

of course no minds need to change for trump to be the least popular and least trusted incoming president ever (http://www.gallup.com/poll/201158/skeptical-trump-handle-presidential-duties.aspx)

the deep state is real and is mad at trump

it's clear that it's gonna be open warfare between Trump/GOP and the actual bureaucracy/deep state/gov't and basically there's no way that spells success for GOP agenda. it means constant infighting, backstabbing, leaking, staff turnover, punitive retaliation, lawsuits, injunctions, illegal shenanigans etc.

fun fun

I think it was Claire McCaskill this morning who made the point that it was less that intelligence got everything wrong re: Iraq and more that the Bush admin cherry picked what it wanted from intelligence agencies to buttress its goals. Whereas in this case the intelligence agencies - which sure, could still be wrong - are uniform in their conclusions. There is no alternative conclusion or interpretation, that we know of, at least. And McCaskill, fwiw, said that she has seen the classified report.

which is not to mean that bad shit will not be passed - bad shit is definitely already being passed - but that implementation is going to be really, really messy

xp

remember that Bush admin had their own intel operation filtering shit, this is not a comparable situation

08/06/01 ~ CIA: "OBL -> US!"
01/20/17 ~ RasPutin :)

@adamjohnsonNYC
How is it Trump can take something so precious and wonderful, like the President telling the CIA to go fuck itself and ruin it

I think it's time to update the old Upton Sinclair quote for Greenwald et al.:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when those sweet, sweet clicks depend upon his not understanding it

let's talk about the hilarious trial balloon rumor of Hil running for NYC mayor

was hoping that my Coppola thread revive would distract you from this nonsense

Even if we imagine for the moment that the 'proof' of Russia's hacking and manipulation is all smoke and mirrors, the net effect is some lame duck sanctions that the incoming president is probably going to lift ASAP, not years of entrenched warfare. This thing is not like that other 'WMD' thing. Besides which, if you've paid attention to Trump and Putin's blossoming romance, you can excise the entire hacking narrative and still construct a pretty compelling case for SOME degree of Russian involvement/interference in this election and/or Trump's obvious and troubling deference to Putin.

Actually, there's no real maybe about my latter assertion. Trump is clearly enamored of Putin.

@adamjohnsonNYC
How is it Trump can take something so precious and wonderful, like the President telling the CIA to go fuck itself and ruin it

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Friday, January 6, 2017 4:34 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3

Trump presidency is like the beginning of Lean on Me where Morgan Freeman storms out "They can go to Hell! this place deserves exactly what it gets!"

The Democrats would look like idiots if they are really trying -- as some have worried -- to pull off some McCarthy smear on a guy who they could nail in a million other ways

― Treeship, Friday, January 6, 2017 8:21 PM (yesterday)

i am genuinely curious how "the democrats" could get the cia, the fbi, and the nsa to declare that russia interfered in our election

the same way they got everybody to believe in climate change and Evolution

the fbi, cia and nsa are not alleging trump is involved. harry reid and others have implied that. commentators on the moderate left are implying that.

A 'shop worthy of sharing:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cogi0NvUsAE14wz.jpg

oh man that logo

If the report had found Trump's people were in fact involved in any way, would it have been released?

idk. is there enough time to charge him with something before he takes office?

if there even is anything there

in his pants

"The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with."

Tax evasion, dogg

I don't want to reference his tweets, but isn't it just like a rapist to blame the victim

Trump twitter is sometimes worth it to read everyone trolling him.

Indeed, despite a lack of foreign policy experience, Mr. Kushner is emerging as an important figure at a crucial moment for some of America’s most complicated diplomatic relationships. Such is his influence in the geopolitical realm that transition officials have told the Obama White House that foreign policy matters that need to be brought to Mr. Trump’s attention should be relayed through his son-in-law, according to a person close to the transition and a government official with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

So when the Chinese ambassador to the United States called the White House in early December to express what one official called China’s “deep displeasure” at Mr. Trump’s break with longstanding diplomatic tradition by speaking by phone with the president of Taiwan, the White House did not call the president-elect’s national security team. Instead, it relayed that information through Mr. Kushner, whose company was not only in the midst of discussions with Anbang but also has Chinese investors.

lol

There's so much winning I just can't Take it

trump's frequent claims of widespread voter fraud and a "rigged" election -- which continued after he won couldn't have been more in line with the russian agenda of "casting doubts upon the integrity of our electoral process."

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/us/politics/senate-confirmation-hearings-background-checks.html

It's telling of ... lots of things that even since winning he still seems to be in defensive campaign mode.

it seems telling but i don't know what exactly it is supposed to tell me. part of what is so sickening about all of this is that there is so much i don't understand about his behavior after the election. before, disseminating wild conspiracies could have been a way to bolster his pitch that something has gone profoundly wrong and we need to "take our country back." but now? taking on the CIA?? it doesn't add up.

someone said after the election that trump is just going to relish in playing the "role of president," the pomp and circumstance, whatever. that was a bleak idea -- the presidency reduced to a ceremonial role while the conservatives busily take a hacksaw to the federal government -- but it was at least comprehensible to me. this shit right now makes absolutely no sense.

i just don't think "anger at the legitimacy of his win being questioned" is enough of a motive for him to openly side with russia and putin against the intelligence community. it just makes him look more suspicious and ridiculous.

i keep thinking of adam curtis' discussion in hypernormalisation about russian intelligence's embrace of unpredictability to keep enemies and allies alike in the dark

trying to work out the motivations of a lot of the actors here is like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i keep worrying about how this is going to change everyday life. bully culture doesn't stop at 18 and I'm already susceptible to it ......

guess I shouldn't use future tense considering the number of hate crimes spiked after the election and shit like that's already happening but like how much worse will it get?

seems like a stupid thing to worry about, sure, given all of the other major things likely to get toppled in his tenure, but it's just one on my mind atm until 1/20

Those who've suggested that Trump sides with Russia because he thinks they may have serious dirt on him is probably otm. They may or may not, but they probably have suggested as much to him either directly or through a proxy.

someone said after the election that trump is just going to relish in playing the "role of president," the pomp and circumstance

Trump will not be a ceremonial president, imo. He loves power too much. That's why he lorded it over the contestants in The Apprentice so convincingly. What he doesn't like is responsibility, because a responsible person must admit error and face consequences, two things he apparently refuses to do under any circumstances. So most likely, he'll continue his erratic ways, being a demanding dictator one minute, and a lazy lout who can't bothered with the job the next minute.

One on hand, Trump getting angry at the CIA for fairly openly leaking intel to the press is VMIC. On the other, if he has learned anything from Putin, it might be that you can maintain huge popularity by continuing to play the outsider let down by an incompetent or corrupt establishment irrespective of how long you stay in power and how many social or economic problems you are at least partially responsible for.

he might become the first President to get punched in the face on national tv

He looks like if you punched him in the face your fist would sink in like a month-old pumpkin.

I can't imagine there's potential dirt that Trump would possibly be worried about at this point. He became the most powerful person in the world saying a million things that would derail anyone else. Even the videotape was forgotten about in a couple of weeks.

SV otm

every night I pray for Scanners ability and every morning I wake up shattered

Someone made a good point that once he becomes president, he can't just, whenever a crisis or disaster hits - and there will be both, no matter the president - just say, oh, I'll be making a statement tomorrow, or next week, or next month. He'll have to react, and either do so convincingly or incompetently. And not just via twitter. Plus the public (on both sides) will both be expecting results, and bearing the brunt of any fuck-ups.

At this point actually comparing Trump and Putin seems a bit misbegotten. There is no accurate way to gauge Putin's popularity, or even his legitimacy. I mean, talk about rigged elections. Plus, he actually boldly and baldly has dissidents and enemies murdered. I suppose the US could get there, but if that happens, that's pretty much the end of everything we know.

Re: Russian dirt, I doubt it really exists, but if it did, how would that even come up? Surely US intel would know by now, but are they compelled to reveal that? It's like Trump's taxes. It's not like they're top secret, people have seen them, not least the IRS. If there was something truly unseemly, it would/will become known. Maybe it will. Maybe it doesn't matter. But I doubt there's anything worse than what we know already.

At this point actually comparing Trump and Putin seems a bit misbegotten. There is no accurate way to gauge Putin's popularity, or even his legitimacy. I mean, talk about rigged elections. Plus, he actually boldly and baldly has dissidents and enemies murdered. I suppose the US could get there, but if that happens, that's pretty much the end of everything we know.

Russia has reasonably good independent polling and Putin's popularity does go down as well as up but has never dipped below the kind of approval levels most western politicians would die for. There are clear illegitimate reasons for that as well as 'valid' ones, including the marginalising of dissenting media (it does exist but has nothing like the reach of state-run outlets or outlets whose owners want to keep in the good graces of the government) but, legitimate or otherwise, Putin isn't just popular, he's popular in a country where most agents of authority are widely disliked or at least distrusted.

One of the key things that he has done to maintain that is to position himself as the only person you can really trust to look out for your interests. Problems with delivery are someone else's fault. If something bad has happened, it's because Putin doesn't know about it or functionaries are working against his guidelines. It's why his absurdly long phone-in shows are so important to his image. People ring in with their problems and within a week there are press stories about their building's boiler being fixed, the corrupt traffic cop being arrested, the hospital receiving the new brain scanner, or whatever.

Trump's ability to stage manage that to the same degree is limited due to the nature of the American press but if he has any sense at all he'll continue with the anti-establishment line for the duration of his tenure. He's not going to be able to deliver on his promises but he can make out like he's doing his best for the little guy against the odds. I don't think he's skilled enough to pull it off, but we'll see.

Yeah, "the crooked establishment" is a moving target for demagogues, who go after it even after they attain power. This is exactly what Robespierre and his group used to do, and he was also backed up by a coordinated system of "fake news" in the form of scurrilous pamphlets. It's an old strategy. The fact that Trump is still going with it even after he attained power might indicate that he is smarter than he looks, and that he realizes that he'll never get legitimacy as a "normal" president and so much constantly protect his image as an "outsider," keeping the rest of the government on the defensive.

It's all so sordid and gross, but it makes sense, and might explain these seemingly bonkers CIA tweets that make him look like a kremlin puppet.

what a predictable dolt this clown is.

eventually he's going to have to stop watching tv entirely.

don't be ridiculous, after a couple of months he'll be done with his cabinet appointment reality show and he'll do nothing BUT watch TV

Kellyanne Conway literally just said, "I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep’s is inciting people's worst instincts"

Even if you magically wiped out every other venal and shitty facet of Trump's being, his perpetual victimhood is so fucking off-putting.

Wait, that didn't make sense. I meant to say his victimhood alone is enough to make him thoroughly repugnant and enough to disqualify him from pretty much any role in life that requires others to deal with him directly.

I don't know I'm sure he'd be able to hold a cashier job for maybe a whole summer if he focused.

I'm not sure of that. I'm really not sure of that at all.

I'm not at all convinced that he would be able to hold down any kind of normal job where he wasn't able to surround himself with sycophants and yes-men who would pick up his slack and cover his ass.

yea his whole victim routine might've been convincing to some when he was running as an outsider vs. the Clinton machine but holy shit that is not gonna play well when he's actually president

I find this sort of infantile shit more scary than him falling out with the CIA tbh.

He's nuts.

Yes. The next president of the United States is excoriating Meryl Streep on Twitter instead of preparing to be the next president of the United States. He is demonstrably mentally ill.

Melania should intervene and teach Meryl about bullying, per her First Lady initiative.

hre did call Streep "overrated," so he might be better at film criticism than anything else.

I don't disagree with him there tbf.

is it possible to argue to celebrity soapboxers that public criticism will be counterproductive bcz WW3 might start while he is watching video and tweeting his angry responses? This clearly is going to take up at least 10% of the prez's waking hours.

hre did call Streep "overrated," so he might be better at film criticism than anything else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw_cOCGWXJU

xpost Do you think he's going to otherwise be intensely focused on matters of state and doing all he can to prevent WW3? I think there's a solid argument to be made that criticizing him publicly is almost a moral imperative BECAUSE it will keep him occupied on Twitter and away from anything resembling governance.

gotta say all the angry "celebrities should stay out of politics" chat is particularly amusing this time around

Everyone should criticize him publicly at every opportunity. EVERYONE.

public criticism is good

I absolutely love that this stuff gets under his skin.

you mean, everything?

Well not everything, he doesn't seem particularly interested in politics, for example.

Can you imagine going through life like this? Having a tantrum literally every single time anyone criticizes you or disagrees with you or tells you no? I think (hope) that he's kept himself so cocooned and surrounded with people who were keen to salve his wounded ego that the daily stress of dealing with an entire country that is largely opposed to him will give him a massive coronary sooner than later.

Interesting note: Meryl Streep only agreed to play Woody Allen's ex-wife in Manhattan if he dropped her from his list of overrated artists in the script.

many xps

idk i think he thrives on this shit

xp

has the Mattis insurrection come up yet?

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a52102/mattis-trump-pentagon-disagreement/

Pierce is licking his chops over this one

the timing of his tweets are weird, why did it take him 16 minutes to complete this thought? was he trying to build suspense, assuming that his blue-collar supporters would be up at 3:30 AM on Monday?

3.27 am Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a.....

3.36 am Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never "mocked" a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him.......

3.43 am "groveling" when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!

lol someone itt pointed out that trump probably just heard about the "mad dog" nickname and that's why he picked mattis right

because he can take up more space on the TL i think xp

xpost Of course. It's almost always safe to assume the simplest and shallowest possibility, divorced from all logic and strategy, when trying to suss out his motivations.

Would Mattis be a decent civil servant or does he just give no fucks?

he did reject someone because they had a moustache so

Josh Malina is hilariously trolling people over the Streep thing on Twitter.

Also: http://theslot.jezebel.com/contrary-to-trumps-claim-the-dress-shops-in-d-c-are-d-179097764

"Actors should not talk about politics!"

http://exiledonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/reagan-bonzo.jpg

"For the 100th time" in that middle tweet is a level of peevishness I haven't seen previously. I suggest we keep hammering that.

do not care about president twitter wars, this shit is a distraction

https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/818459694616444928

I'm with you on this one Morbs. I don't have a big beef with Streep's speech, but not really feeling the million and one thinkpieces about how it was a GAME CHANGER!

My take on Trump Twitter at this point is that:

a) it's absolutely a distraction and should always be met with questions of what he's trying to divert our attention away from
b) because it's a public mouthpiece of a soon-to-be world leader and because his casual indiscretion and lack of caution have the potential to wreak serious havoc, it's not just a distraction and unfortunately can't be treated solely as such
c) it has value as a cloudy window into the diseased mind of our next president
d) every time the media uncritically reposts a Trump tweet as if it's an official presidential statement, everyone but Trump loses

Dan Rather wrote a fairly thoughtful piece about this on Facebook.

thx, Bush & Bam

Donald Trump Has the Keys to the Most Invasive Surveillance State in History

In one campaign speech, Trump said of the ability to hack his political enemies, “I wish I had that power. Man, that would be power.” He has also expressed support for the NSA’s collection of telephone metadata, which is now outlawed. “As far as I’m concerned, that would be fine,” Trump said in a December 2015 radio interview. “When you have the world looking at us and would like to destroy us as quickly as possible, I err on the side of security.” His recent picks for attorney general (Jeff Sessions) and head of the CIA (Mike Pompeo) agree. “Congress should pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database,” Pompeo wrote in the Wall Street Journal in January 2016. “Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.”

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/06/donald-trump-has-the-keys-to-the-most-invasive-surveillance-state-in-history-nsa-cia/

Yes, Rather's little piece was terrific! I had no idea he was still around, let alone still working at that level of critical insight.

Rather has been a surprisingly great and heartening presence this election season and one of the only reasons I've started regularly visiting Facebook again.

Watching from the sidelines and: http://www.attn.com/stories/14052/bernie-sanders-and-donald-trump-influence-young-progressives

lol

12k!

haha but its double :-)

The children are our future.

i joined

yah me too

I'll say this much, when the world ends and aliens descend to salvage what's left, they'll have no questions about what went wrong, just why.

because *emails*!

because the Dems could lose to a turnip (and did)

that's not true butthead

"i'm a socialist" meme is lol

WRONG VEGETABLE (started by Hurting 2 on board I Love Music on Jun 5, 2007)

xxp